


Strategic Pluralism

by Thea_Bromine



Series: Strategic Pluralism [1]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Dubious Consent, M/M, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-29
Updated: 2014-01-29
Packaged: 2018-01-10 11:52:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 39,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1159396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thea_Bromine/pseuds/Thea_Bromine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fuck or Die. Can I say that here?</p><p> </p><p>  <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/125573331@N03/14712936631"></a><br/>  <img/></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In Which Something Bad Happens to Xander

**Author's Note:**

> British spelling because Giles thinks it's correct.

Of course, he wasn’t stupid enough to open the door without checking first, not after dark. The vampires might need an invitation before they could come in, but there were plenty of other things which didn’t.

This... was vampires. Lots of them. Banging on his door, yelling like Saturday night drunks.

“Watcher! Hey, Watcher! Delivery for you!” And a slow, taunting “Come and geeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet it!”

No, thank you. Didn’t order anything, try next door.

Until the group unfurled to show the ‘delivery’, which took the form of one Xander Harris, blindfolded, gagged and with wrists and ankles tied, but fighting and snarling nonetheless. For that... he would open the door. Carefully, and from the stock end of a crossbow. The group roiled again and opened out into two or three lines; Xander struggled manfully in the grip of the closest vampire. Not one he recognised. He wasn’t sure if that were good or bad.

“Want him, Watcher?”

He didn’t answer. If Xander... if this were a trap, if Xander had been turned _(no, no, not Xander, no_ ), he was saying nothing that might be interpreted as an invitation.

“Want him the way he is?”

The yellow eyes laughed at him; the pointed fingers pulled on Xander’s hair and the ridged face dropped to nuzzle the side of his neck. His own finger tightened on the crossbow and he moved it ostentatiously towards Xander.

“Oooh, pretty boy, I think he’s offering you a clean death.” That was spoken into Xander’s ear; Xander stopped fighting and there was a moment’s stillness before he twisted as far as the grip on his arms permitted. Before he offered his chest.

It might still be a trick; the crossbow never wavered.

“Oh... forgot. Delivery note.” The square of paper was held up between two fingers. He wasn’t stupid enough to fall for that one: he’d seen it done before. Something was offered temptingly, just out of reach, and when you reached for it, your hand broke the boundary of the house, and next thing you knew, a vampire had you by the wrist and was dragging you outside.

“No? But I can’t bring it in. Tell you what: I’ll put it inside the packaging.”

Xander flinched visibly as the paper was slipped between the buttons on his shirt; the vampire liked that, Giles could tell.

“All right, boys, push it through the letter-box.”

When they hurled Xander forward, he stepped nimbly out of the way, keeping the crossbow lined up; the body hurtled past him – not turned, then, moving uninvited across the threshold – and hit the wall hard. From the corner of his eye he saw the boy lunge and twist, trying to maintain his balance on bound feet, and thump gracelessly onto the floor. He watched the vampires, still the immediate danger.

“No tip? What _is_ the world coming to? Night, Watcher. Enjoy.” And they were gone, melting out of the courtyard and into the dark. He kept the crossbow raised until the door was well shut.

When he turned round, Xander had managed to get himself as far as sitting against the wall, and was rubbing his face against his shoulder, frantically trying to work the blindfold away.

“Just, just keep still a moment, Xander. I’ll get you free in a minute. I just need...” to touch you with the cross which he just _happened_ to have close at hand, and how bloody pointless was that since Xander was already inside and it was nothing more than habit to insist that everybody coming in had to be able to lay a hand on the thing. But good habits kept Slayers and Watchers alive and dear heavens, he was babbling as badly as Xander ever did, although at least he was managing not to do it out loud. At last, though, the crossbow could be set aside, and Xander stilled at his touch as he unpicked the knots, first on the gag and then on the blindfold. The rush of magic took him by surprise.

“What was that?” Xander’s voice was a little too high, and childishly uncertain.

“I don’t know.”

“It was... it felt... it’s something they did to me, Giles, it wasn’t an accident. They were waiting for me. They knew who I was and they, they, I don’t know where they took me, I’ve had that thing round my eyes for... what time is it?”

“Half past nine.”

“I went out at six. And they wanted me, Giles. They took me somewhere, I don’t know where it was, and shut me in, and then somebody came and they,” and he blushed hotly, “they took my shirt off.”

Giles frowned. “Took your shirt off? Why?”

Xander shook his head. “I don’t know. I couldn’t see, but I think there were a lot of people there. Well, maybe not people, but vamps. Nobody said anything. A couple of times somebody started to speak, but somebody else always shushed them and then one of them drew on me.” He clawed at his shirt, remembering. “Somebody drew something on my chest. And they laughed.”

They both gazed at the pale, unmarked skin. “Well, that’s what it felt like,” said Xander uncertainly. “Like a brush and somebody painting something on my chest.”

“There are spells which can be marked on the skin,” said Giles, flatly. Xander’s eyes flickered to the inside of Giles forearm but he said nothing. The slip of paper detached itself from Xander’s shirt and fluttered to the floor; Giles leaned over to look at it, without touching it.

“Would that have been what they drew?”

“I – it might have been. That way up, maybe? There was a long down stroke, I remember that. It tickled. And a curving one...” His hand swept round, as far as a nipple and he blushed again and refastened his shirt. “What is it?”

“I have no idea.” Giles held a hand over the paper but it was inert; he risked picking it up. “A rune of some sort. The symbol of a spell. It’s a curse, I can tell from the shape of it, but not what it does.” He looked up into Xander’s terrified face and modified his words. “Well, not a curse precisely; it’s some sort of compulsion.” He sat back on his heels; he was too old, he thought, fleetingly, to crouch on the floor.  

“To make me... what?”

“I don’t _know_ , Xander. I’ll, I’ll have to look at the books. And you must tell me if anything changes.”

“Like what?”  

“Well, if it’s a compulsion, then presumably you’ll feel the need to do something. So when you start feeling that you need to do something out of the ordinary, then we need to know.”

“Yeah. Out of the ordinary. For what value of ordinary? Ordinary ordinary or Sunnydale ordinary? ’Cause at the moment I feel a distinct urge to go and dust some vamps, which is O.K. for Sunnydale but will get me weird looks in L.A.”

Giles waved his spectacles. “I would guess, Sunnydale ordinary, but let me know if, well, if anything else occurs. Of course, there’s always the possibility that, that you won’t know. That the compulsion will take you over and you won’t realise it’s there.”

“Oh, great. And then what? I try to kill you? I try to kill Buffy? Myself? Trigger the apocalypse? Giles, they drew something on me and it’s going to make me do something and you don’t even know what! I’m wigging here; if you’re not going to help, the least you could do is wig with me!”

Giles glared at him. “You can wig later; now you can do research.” He softened a little. “I’ll call Willow. If she and Buffy come over, we’ll get through a lot more in the time.”

“Yeah, but _what_ time? I mean, if I’m going to go off pop and start, I dunno, offing people randomly, don’t you think it would help to know when I’m likely to do it?”

Giles turned on him. “Yes, I bloody do! And if you can think of any way to find out without _doing the sodding research_ , I’ll be glad to hear it! But until then, what I’ve been so carefully trying _not_ to say, is that we haven’t got _time_ to wig. You want to know what’s wrong with you? Well, so do I. You think it’s likely to be something bad? So do I! This is a Hellmouth, of _course_ it’s something bad! I...” He mastered himself. Xander was frightened enough without him making it worse.

“I’ll call Willow and Buffy,” he said, more gently. “You fill the kettle; I’m going to need tea. There’s whatever fizzy stuff you left last time in the fridge; you’ve had a shock, you could probably do with the sugar, although heaven knows I never thought I’d hear myself say as much. I don’t think it’s likely to be death-dealing or apocalypse-inducing, Xander. A compulsion of that magnitude requires a hell of a lot of power if it’s to overcome, well, the natural resistance of the person it’s laid on. On Buffy, say, a death-dealing compulsion... well, to some extent, of course, it’s what she already has, so making it stronger would be relatively straightforward. You would need a powerful sorcerer to do it, but the spell itself wouldn’t be so complex. But I think doing it to you would be harder because...”

“Because my reaction to ‘Go! Slay!’ would be less ‘Yay! Party!’ and more ‘Wait! What?’”

“Quite so. But a compulsion is rarely good, and it might be aimed at using you to make Buffy vulnerable. Inducing you to put yourself in danger when she’s present, say, so that she’s concentrating on protecting you rather than slaying.”

And that was a sore point, always had been. But for once, Xander let it drop, turning away to the kitchen, and allowing Giles, at last, to lift the telephone.   

Tracking Buffy down was mercifully easy, for once, and her by now habitual argument that she couldn’t or needn’t come to research or work with him was silenced instantly by the statement ‘Xander’s been cursed’.

“I’ll get Willow. We’ll be right over. Is he O.K., Giles?”

“For the moment, but I’d be happier if we knew what was going on. Be careful, Buffy. They brought Xander to me deliberately, and they gave us a clue in the rune, also deliberately, which inclines me to think that there’s more to this than meets the eye. It’s not a plain attack on Xander; if they meant him real harm they would have killed him or turned him.” Xander was hovering in the doorway, listening; Giles spared a moment to regret having to speak so plainly. It couldn’t be pleasant for the boy to hear his own death discussed in such a manner. “But this looks more like an attempt to distract us. Me. Maybe to cut you off from us. To tie me – and Xander – up in finding and undoing it so we’re not paying attention to whatever else is going on.” Not that Xander would be a lot of help in research but perhaps the minor flattery would ease the sting of being identified as nothing more than bait.

“Want me to bring a vamp or two for questioning?”

“I think... not yet. We’ll see what we can find out by ourselves first.”

“Well, you’re Research Guy. Half an hour, ‘kay?”

Xander peeled himself off the doorframe as Giles put the phone down. “They’re coming?”

“Now. We’ll start without them.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Read the dictionary, I think.”

“What?”

Giles picked through the contents of the nearest bookcase, and passed over a neat volume.

“Dictionary of runes. Do _not_ spill anything on it, it’s older than you are. Older than me, come to that, it belonged to my grandmother. Look for the rune itself, or for anything in the same style. You see these tails on the down strokes? They aren’t usual; I can’t think of an alphabet which uses them, so I don’t know if they’re significant or just the particular style of whoever wrote the thing.”

“God. You want me to match _handwriting_?”

“Try.”

“’Kay.”

And that itself was unusual: he would have expected a lot more argument, a lot more by way of ‘can’t you just drag the information from the air and tell us what’s going on?’ It wasn’t really like Xander to take a book and open it without some expression of how he really wasn’t suited to research.

“Are you, are you feeling all right?”

And was that a blush? “Yeah. I’m fine.”

“Not feeling anything out of the ordinary?”

Xander actually squirmed. “No.”

“Xander...”

“’M fine, Giles.”

He knew the power of silence; he waited. Give it a minute and Xander would babble.

Xander squirmed again, unmistakeably. “I’m just... I’m just jittery. Like you said, shock, right? I’m twitchy. Nothing worse than that. I just feel a bit...” Giles could see him bite down on another word; the ‘twitchy’ which was offered again was plainly not what had first come to mind.

“Right. Well, if it changes, you _must_ let me know. It’s important, Xander.”

“I _know_ , I get it. Compulsion. Curse. Danger to myself and everybody round me. Believe me, Giles, I’m not feeling any desire to do anything...” and that was _definitely_ a blush, “dangerous.”

He shifted uncomfortably in his seat, and Giles suddenly made the connection. “Right. Yes. Good.” It was hardly surprising; Xander would by no means be the first person to find that an adrenaline rush was followed by arousal. Faith had said so more than once, and Giles himself... He hastily turned his mind to more practical matters.

He had done little more than identify a dozen useful books with which to start when Buffy and Willow whirled in, dropping bags on every surface, both talking at once, hugging Xander and inspecting him for damage.

“What is it, Giles, what have they done to him and how are you going to fix it?”

“Your faith in me is touching, but for the moment at least, misplaced. I have no idea what they’ve done, or even if they’ve done anything.”

That got a frown from Buffy. “They must have done something. Compulsion spells _do_ do things, don’t they?”

“Yes, but the more I think about it the less I understand it. Xander says he doesn’t feel any compulsion – which is good. It might mean that the spell didn’t take.”

“Or that there isn’t any spell, right?” asked Willow, thoughtfully. “I mean, what you said about it being something to keep you occupied. It might be just – pretend there’s a spell and send you looking for something that doesn’t exist.”

“Also possible, yes.”

“But we can’t chance it.” That was Willow again.

“No. There’s the rune, there was definitely some magic happening, and until we identify that we can’t do anything else.”

He wasn’t sure how much use they would be. Xander was working slowly through the dictionary, stopping for sugar and caffeine much less often than Giles would have expected. Buffy was as much use in research as normal, which was to say not much: her forte was slaying, not reading. She was the weapon; his job was to aim and fire it. She tried, though, trailing slowly through leather bound volumes and sighing. Willow set up her laptop and immersed herself, she said, in internet searches. He still didn’t understand how that worked, and he was far from convinced that it was useful, apart from being phenomenally expensive on his telephone bill, but when he suggested books, she explained in incomprehensible detail why her method was superior, and after a while his incipient headache persuaded him to leave it alone.

It was probably fair that Xander found the first clue.

“Um, Giles? Does this look to you like the other one?”

It did. Not exactly the same but close enough to hint at a line of enquiry. He rested his hand on Xander’s shoulder and leaned over to read the single line of text; Xander jumped.

“Are you...”

“Don’t keep _on_ , Giles. I’m fine.” But the boy was flushed enough that Giles touched the backs of his fingers to Xander’s forehead; Xander flinched.

“You’re hot.”

“It’s warm in here, that’s all.”

Willow, distracted from the screen in front of her, reached over. “No, Giles is right. You’re hot.”

“I’m... I’m scared, O.K.? Giles, the rune.” He got up and moved away from both of them, keeping his back turned; Willow mouthed “What?” at Giles, who shook his head at her. Xander had every right to be scared, and admitting it wouldn’t have been the easiest thing for him to do.

“Phthorian runes... don’t ring any bells. Not one of the major groups. Still, a name is useful. Willow, does that benighted machine of yours have anything? P-H-T-H. Buffy, pass me that book? No, the one with the green cover. Willow?”

“Phthormenes? Is that the same?”

He shrugged. “Try.”

She hit a few keys; Xander had apparently recovered himself and turned to watch, although he was biting the side of his thumb. Giles automatically put a hand out to stop him, and Xander shied away, sliding around the coffee table to sit next to Buffy.

“Demons.”

No surprise there.

“Extinct demons.”

Surprise. Willow looked up at him. “I’m not finding anything except that they died out.”

“So, is there a _Boy’s Big Book of Dead Demons_?” asked Buffy chirpily. They all turned to stare at her. “What? Giles has the _Boy’s Big Book of Dinosaurs_. I saw it last time I was here.”

The stares were transferred to Giles, who fidgeted. “I came here in such a hurry that half my books had to be sent after me. Whoever crated up my house didn’t do it in any sort of sensible fashion: I think that one belongs to my nephew.”

“That’s your story and you’re sticking to it,” nodded Buffy; Willow’s eyes were big and round.

“There are baby Gileses? Like with mini-tweed? And tiny spectacles?”

His own spectacles were in his hand, as was his handkerchief; he knew he did that too often and he knew – did he ever know! – that they teased him to get the reaction. Oz had told him that he should never play cards for money; they had played poker for imaginary stakes through the bars of the book cage once or twice while waiting for moonrise, and Giles theoretically owed Oz the gross domestic product of several small countries. (“The spectacles, man – major tell.”)

“Christopher Giles. He’s ten. No tweed, but yes, spectacles. And wholly irrelevant to the matter in hand.”

And what the hell was wrong with Xander now? He had gazed at Giles, mouth open, and then with a muttered excuse, bolted, apparently for the bathroom.

He was a long time coming back, and when he did he looked – the only word which came to Giles’ mind was ‘flustered’. He was flushed and out of breath, and he looked ill at ease. Giles opened his mouth to ask again if Xander were all right, and then thought better of it; it occurred to him uncomfortably that Xander might have retreated to deal with his earlier problem, and that he probably wouldn’t appreciate having attention drawn to it.  The boy settled himself next to Buffy again; she, having, as he had observed more than once, the tact and diplomacy of a howitzer, stared at him.

“What’s the matter? Are you...”

“Will you all just shut up? I’m fine, I’m peachy, _there is nothing wrong with me_.”

“Is it the compulsion? What do you want to do?”

_“Giles!”_

Giles looked up from his book. “Yes?”

Xander’s face worked for a second and then he swung away towards the door. “I’ve gotta get out of here. I’m... I’ll go for pizza or something. Need the walk, ‘kay?”

“Oh, Xander, not really a good idea!” That was Willow. Giles had to agree.

“Don’t go out on your own, Xander. We still don’t know what this is about; they may be waiting for you again.”

“I’ve gotta. I can’t stand this. I’ve got a stake, I’ll be careful, whatever, but I’ve got to get out.” His hand went to the door handle – and skidded away. “I – what?”

“What’s the matter?”

“I – can’t touch it.” He was feeling in front of him, and they could all see it; something was turning his hand away from the door handle. Buffy got up and followed him, reaching past him.

“I can?”

“Wait.” That was Giles, always advocating caution. He joined them, and lifted a stake from the ever present supply. “Buffy? Open the door.”

There was nothing outside. They stood watching for half a minute before Buffy stepped forward, moving to the edge of the light. Then she turned back, enquiringly. Giles followed her, looking for any movement, and seeing none.

Xander came after – and crashed hard into some invisible barrier.

“Fuck!”

“Language,” said Giles, automatically, although he was inclined to agree, and both Buffy and Willow rolled their eyes. “Willow, can you come out?”

She could. And they could all go in again, but Xander was stuck.

“Giles?” Willow again. “How does the keeping vamps out until they’re invited thing actually work?”

“I’m not a vampire! I haven’t been turned! Giles didn’t invite me in, I just fell through his door! And it’s not that I can’t get in, it’s that I can’t get out!”

“Well, but Xander, Willow is quite right, it does look like the same barrier. It’s to do with wards: your home is your sanctuary and is automatically warded unless you break the wards. That at least is why but as for the how, Cornelius of Leptis Magna... we don’t know.”

Buffy frowned. “So... does Xander need an invitation?” She skipped out through the door again and turned. “Xander? Come out?”

He put out a cautious hand, and they all saw it hit the line of the door. “Can’t.”

“Giles, you try,” said Willow, frowning. He raised his eyebrows at her, but he stepped outside the door beside Buffy.

“Come out, Xander.”

This time the hand, carefully extended, was followed by Xander’s body. He stopped beside Giles.

“O.K., now try this. Come in again. Buffy, you stay out. Now, Xander, you go out to Buffy.”

He couldn’t.

“Buffy? Come in. Take Xander’s hand. Both of you go out.”

That worked. Xander, it seemed, could go out _with_ Buffy, but not _to_ her.

“Will? Confused here. What’s happening?”

“Just one more, Xander? Come back in. Now, Giles, tell him to go out.”

Giles’ turn to roll his eyes, but he acquiesced. “Go out, please, Xander.”

And Xander crossed the threshold. “Um, I’m out, but I don’t think I can go much further. It’s uncomfortable. What _is_ it, guys? Not liking this. Coming back in now.”

“Yes, Willow,” agreed Giles, closing the door, “what is it? I’m sure we’re all being very stupid, but I don’t understand it either.”

She shrugged nervously. “I think it’s you, Giles. You told him not to go out on his own – and he couldn’t. He could go out when somebody went with him, and he could do what you told him, but when you told him to do two conflicting things he said they were uncomfortable.”

Buffy frowned. “Test it, Giles? Can you make him... I don’t know, strip to his shorts and dance on the table? Xander, try not to.”

Giles glared at her. “I hardly think a test needs to be something humiliating, Buffy.” He glanced at the boy. “Xander? Fetch me the tea cup.”

They all watched: Xander plainly tried to avoid crossing the room, but the cup was collected from Giles’ desk and placed in his outstretched hand.

“Bloody hell!”

“Look on the bright side, Giles,” said Xander bitterly, throwing himself on the couch. “You’ve always complained that I don’t do as I’m told. Now it seems I have to.”

“But _why_?” asked Willow, pertinently. “Why would anybody think it mattered that Xander should obey Giles?”

Xander fidgeted; Giles had his own reason for wishing to fidget but he controlled himself. The thought of a submissive, obedient Xander... was only appealing when the submission was willing. “Xander, what I want you to do is precisely what you think fit.”

It took a moment for Xander to grasp the point of that; then he got up and went to the door. “I can go, but... it feels wrong. Like I’ve forgotten something important? Worrying. Giles, what _is_ it?”

That was a cry of genuine distress, and one to which Giles had no answer. He gathered his thoughts, and his wallet. “I don’t know, Xander, but we’ll find out. Do you still need to get out of here? Then go and get pizza for all of us, and Buffy, you go with him. Xander, is that better? If I tell you to go?”

The boy nodded, wide eyed. “I think perhaps my last instruction was too general, that maybe the spell knew that I thought you shouldn’t go alone. So I’d given permission and that meant that you could leave, but I didn’t really mean it so you felt you should stay. We can work on that, Xander; it just needs a certain amount of manipulation until we find out where the constraints are. If you and Buffy go together I won’t worry about you, and you can run a sweep on the cemetery on the way. Willow and I will work on the spell.”

Xander certainly looked more at ease when they came back; they had met nothing untoward either going or coming, which was in itself unusual, but Giles wondered if, having set their trap, the local vampires were now lying low until he – or Xander – triggered it. He ate much less than his share of the pizza, choosing instead to work between several large volumes in his hunt for Phthorian literature.

Xander himself found the most informative entry. “Phthormene demons. Extinct, like Buffy said. They look like... like a cross between an octopus and a dump truck. Hermaphrodite. _So_ didn’t need to know that, specially if it’s got something to do with the spell. War-like. Which explains the extinctness, apparently. They fought with other demons until nobody would fight with them any more and then they fought with each other. Eventually they ran out of each other to fight with.” He looked unhappily at Giles. “This looks like death-dealing to me.”

Giles gazed blankly back. “Are you feeling any urge to go death-dealing?”

For some reason Xander looked away. “ _So_ not.”

It made him uneasy. “What _are_ you feeling?”

“Nothing.” It was muttered, and it was a palpable lie. Willow looked up, startled, and opened her mouth; Giles transferred his glare from Xander to her and she subsided again, reaching over to take Xander’s book from him and turning the page. Giles rubbed the bridge of his nose.

“Xander, it’s obvious that the compulsion has started to, to make itself felt. What is it?”

_“Nothing!”_

“It’s not bloody nothing!” he snapped. “For heaven’s sake, we can all tell that there’s something wrong, so just tell us what it is!”

“Oh,” said Willow quietly. “Oh dear, oh Giles, oh, this is so not good.”

His attention clicked to her. “What have you found?”

She read aloud: “’The Phthormenes being Warlike and Disputatious in character did find themselves dwindling in number and Potency, which same was’ – I think it’s ‘exacerbated’ but the spelling is funny – ‘within their conjugal relations. The Families of great power would not wed with those of lesser for fear of the dilution of their influence, and for Pride and Arrogance, many would not wed at all. Also came there to be many Warriors of rank and standing, but not of the Old Blood, and they would not wed with the older Houses wherein had lain of old the Mastery of the dimension, saying that the Blood of such Houses was become weak. It was indeed so for the Great Houses had married each only with another such and by the passage of time and the Wilful Dissipation of Power the producing of Young had become an uncommon thing. And so it came to pass that the Great Houses would wed by ensnarement, or by seizure and spoliation, and their Mages and Warlocks did contrive by the use of divers Runes most base and depraved that the captured one should go willingly of the flesh if not of the spirit to the breeding place, and if the Act was not made complete within three turns of the Sun, then the Captive was like to die of Desire and the shaking of the spirit within the cage of the flesh.’”

“Oh God,” said Xander faintly. Giles had to agree with him.

“Is that... what I think it is?” asked Buffy cautiously.

“A fuck-or-die spell,” said Xander, slightly too loudly this time.

“A connubial compulsion,” agreed Giles, less colloquially.

“Xander has to... to do the dirty with a demon?”

Xander gave a squeak of dismay, or possibly terror.

“O.K., not a problem, Xan. We go out, we find the demon, I slay it, we never mention this again. Yes?”

“No!” yelped Willow. “There’s more. Wait. Here. ‘Thus they laid the seeds of their own destruction, for many fought against such Rapine of their children and it befell oft-times that the Caster of the spell did enter into Death’s embrace before the enchantment could be completed, and in such case did the Unfortunate Victim also die in great Agony of body and of mind, from the Unachievable Desire.’”

“Rapine?” asked Xander, unsteadily.

“Capture,” said Giles, as reassuringly as he could. “Theft, really, but kidnapping, perhaps. Not...”

“Oh.”

“So what are you saying, Will?”

“You can’t just kill the demon, Buffy, because it won’t break the spell, it will just make it impossible to carry it out. And anyway, it can’t be a demon because the demons are extinct, right, Giles? I read about connubial spells – they were in one of the books that Giles thought I didn’t... well anyway, I read about them, and you have to be really careful casting them because they’re like love spells, they have to be aimed very accurately. Like in _A Midsummer Night’s Dream._ ”

From Buffy’s expression it was plain that she hadn’t been paying attention in Literature class. Giles, on the other hand, knew precisely where this was going, and was helpless to stop it.

“The spell takes on whoever you see first after it’s cast. So whoever Xan saw first after they did it, that’s the person he’s got to... that’s...”

“And that,” said Xander loudly and with unconvincing bravado, “would be Giles.”


	2. In Which Giles Introduces Xander to Some New Cultural Experiences

“The spell takes on whoever you see first after it’s cast. So whoever Xan saw first after they did it, that’s the person he’s got to... that’s...”

“And that,” said Xander loudly and with unconvincing bravado, “would be Giles.”

Giles gazed back, his control absolute. Xander did not need the complication of reading in Giles’ face either of the two contradictory thoughts currently occupying his head: at the same time _oh dear Lord no_ and _oh dear Lord yes please what about now is now good for you?_

“Giles isn’t a girl,” objected Buffy, and the control shattered. His snort of laughter made them all jump.

“I think you’ll find, Buffy, that the spell doesn’t care. Indeed” and the laughter left him, “I suspect that to be precisely why Xander was delivered here in a blindfold.”

“But Xander isn’t gay! And neither are you!”

“Buffy, Giles is bi,” said Willow quietly.

“No way! Since when?” Buffy sounded personally affronted.

“Always.” He didn’t ask how Willow knew, nor did he allow himself to consider the fact that he was discussing his sexual preferences with his Slayer.

“Well, but that’s good, right?” chirped Willow. “It means you’ve done this before.”

It hit him like a gut punch, that Willow – Willow, whom he loved; Willow who had been one of the few people in Sunnydale to value him for who rather than what he was; Willow who was the only person he knew in his exile who seemed to feel as he did about knowledge and about books, and who shared his pleasure in learning – that Willow could believe such a thing about him.

“No,” he said icily. “I haven’t. I did a lot of things in my youth of which I am bitterly ashamed now – but never that. I’ll admit to having been sexually adventurous and I wasn’t always as discriminating as I could wish now that I had been. I’ll even confess that there was a strong helping of arrogance in it: I treated unwillingness as a challenge and seduction as a game. But it was a game I was willing to lose; the girl” – he glowered at Buffy – “ _or_ boy who was really unwilling was safe from me. I thought far too well of myself to use spells. If they wouldn’t come to me just for the asking, they weren’t worth pursuing through any other method. You can call it pride if you like. But you won't accuse me of anything worse than being young and conceited. I _never_ debased myself with compulsion spells.” The degree of his affront was absolute; the insult left no room even for his stammer.

Willow looked at the book in her hands, refusing to meet his eye. “ _So_ not what I meant,” she said unevenly. “Just that if you and Xan have to,” and she made a complicated gesture, “it can only be good that _one_ of you knows what you’re doing.”

The offence went out of him with a breath. “I know what I’m doing,” he agreed, wearily.

“I don’t believe that you’re actually... I mean, Xan isn’t... even if you are! And he can’t seriously want to, even under a spell!” Buffy refused to cede her position. Giles could think of no way to ask, but Willow had known Xander for ever.

“Xan? Is that the compulsion? You’re” and she made another unspecific gesture “about Giles?”

And Xander nodded.

It was so rare for anything to silence Buffy completely that Giles thought irrelevantly that he could almost have enjoyed the experience, were it not for the look of humiliated misery on Xander’s face.

“Well, that’ll be why you have to do what Giles wants,” observed Willow.

“Way with the tact, Will. Thanks.”

“She, she’s right, though, Xander. That does explain it. It’s just a side effect of the spell, it’s nothing we have to worry about separately.”

“Worries me.” That was so soft that he could pretend not to hear it; he could think of no comfort for the boy except to be briskly practical. At least they all seemed to have assumed automatically that he _would_ help: given how mortified Xander would have been if he had been forced to ask, and his own contradictory emotions on the subject, he could think of no way of making such a conversation anything other than excruciating.

“But we’re going to need a plan. At least we know now what the rune _is_. Finding a means of breaking the spell... well, we’ve done research to a deadline before.”

“And we know what the deadline is,” put in Willow. “Three days, according to the text. When did they put the rune on you, Xan?”

Xander shrugged. “Hard to tell.” He considered. “As soon as it was done, they threw me in a van – think it was a van, it made the same sort of noises as Oz’s van, and there was room for two of them to hold me – and brought me here. I don’t think that was more than about ten minutes. And the thing itself didn’t take long. So maybe half an hour before I got here?” His mouth twisted. “I didn’t manage to put up much resistance.”

“Good,” said Giles briskly. “If they’d found you too much trouble they would have killed you. I’ll grant you, this is a mess, but you’re not dead and you’re not hurt.”

“And we’ve got three days to find a solution, Xan.” That was Buffy, and she meant it to be consoling; it was regretfully that he shook his head.

“I, I don’t think we necessarily do. If this follows the form of other connubial spells, three days will be the outside limit, and it will depend on the physiology of the particular demon. Applied to a human, it might be quicker or slower. I think we shouldn’t pay any attention to that, we don’t know enough about the Phthormenes for it to be useful. But we do know that their imperative in developing the spell was breeding, and there’s that reference to the ‘breeding place’. So I, I think that we have something in our favour there.”

Xander gave a squawk of blind outrage. “ _Breeding?_ Giles, I am _not_ having your baby! I’ve got the wrong bits!”

“I – what? No! I meant that we, that we had the advantage of, of strategic pluralism.”

Three blank faces were turned towards him; he searched desperately for understanding even from Willow, and gave up, wondering what _precisely_ had been covered by way of sex education at Sunnydale High.

“The Phthormenes,” he clarified, “appear to have had sex solely in order to breed. Humans can also have sex for pleasure, and are accordingly capable of, of more than one kind of sexual activity.”

“Oh!” Thank heaven, Willow appeared to be capable of following his train of thought. “You mean you and Xander don’t have to make the home run straight away?”

“I mean that we have recourses other than... um... Well, I can think of half a dozen things which might be worth a try just to start with.”

He knew as they left his lips that it had been a poor choice of words. These were teenagers; if they could think of three possibilities they would consider themselves worldly. Buffy leaned forward.

“Like what?”

He quelled her with a glare. “I think that is a conversation I need only have with Xander,” although from Xander’s expression, death would be preferable. “Meanwhile, we need to find out as much as we can about connubial compulsions, about the Phthormenes, and about who might have cast the spell and why.”

“That one’s mine,” said Buffy firmly. “I can go to Willy’s and ask some questions, find a vamp or two.”

Willow agreed. “I’m all Research Girl then; which do you want me to take, Giles, spells or demons?”

“Demons, I think. I know I have books mentioning compulsions; I don’t recall much about Phthormenes, so you might do better with that infernal machine of yours. Xander, I, I think it would be a good idea if you were to stay here rather than going home.” He half expected argument, but it didn’t come, although Xander looked thoroughly miserable. “I’ll drive you girls home if you like; Willow, you don’t need to be here to research, do you? And Buffy, you’ll hardly find Willy willing to talk at this time; you’d do better with him in the morning when the vampires are gone. A proper break for everybody and start again fresh in the morning.”

While Willow packed up her belongings, Giles took the opportunity to draw Xander into the kitchen, which offered at least a modicum of privacy. “Xander, we’re going to need to be, to be very forthright with each other.”

“And that’s not going to be at all embarrassing.”

“We simply can’t afford to be embarrassed,” he said sharply. ”I like this no more than you do, but it isn’t my fault.” He softened a little at Xander’s stricken look. “I don’t mean it’s yours either. Somebody did this to you, Xander, did it deliberately. To us. It was a wilful attack on us and we have to, to fight it together, to fight against whoever did it and not to waste time fighting each other. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry: I’m sure I’m the last person you would have chosen, but we’re in this together and there’s not a lot more to be said.”

Xander’s shoulders drooped; really, thought Giles, one could read his every emotion in the graceful line of his spine.

“Guess so.”

“Good. Then... am I right in assuming that the compulsion has been, has been affecting you since you got here?”

Xander, scarlet, nodded, and plainly gathered his courage to speak. “I don’t think we’ve got three days, Giles. To start with, it was just... I thought it was just... sometimes it just happens? Usually at some really _really_ bad time?” He looked imploringly at Giles who nodded sympathetically.

“I do remember being nineteen.” He quirked an eyebrow at Xander; it wouldn’t hurt to make him laugh. “Some of the stupid things I did at that age are almost certainly down to there having been no spare blood north of my collar to keep my brain working. It gets easier as you grow older, but there are still occasions...” He deliberately left it open and had his reward when Xander grinned.

“Well, like that, only... only it’s not going off.”

Giles glanced over his shoulder; Willow met his eye and deliberately turned away with a distinct expression of ‘not listening’. Nonetheless, he lowered his voice still further as he turned back to Xander. “While we’re out, I suggest you, you deal with it.” Xander was scarlet again and his own face must be no less red. “Buy ourselves a little time.”

Xander shook his head desperately. “Already tried,” he said in a strangled voice. “Couldn’t. Kept nearly...” He absolutely could not colour any more; Giles could almost smell the mortification rolling off him.

“All right,” he said hastily. He understood; there was no need for him to force Xander to say the words. “The spell is pushing you to do what I tell you, so we’ll see if we can force it to accept precisely what I _do_ tell you. I’m giving you an express instruction. While I’m out, go and, and get yourself off. That’s what I want you to do.”

He waited only for Xander’s nod before hurrying out to the girls and bustling them towards the car. Buffy spoke to him once or twice on the short journey, but he answered her largely at random; his mind was constantly returning to Xander and his imagination kept offering him disturbing images of what the young man must be doing.

He drove back a little faster than was perhaps quite safe; when he stopped the car, he had to rein himself in sharply to make himself carry out his normal routines of ensuring that he had a stake to hand and checking every patch of darkness on his way to the door, which was snatched open as he approached. Xander, inside, was wild-eyed, flushed, and plainly distressed.

“I _can’t_ ,” he spat. “I just _can’t_.” His mouth twisted. “Giles, it _hurts!_ ”

“All right. Here. Sit.” He had wondered if this might happen, if the spell might insist on his involvement, and had formulated a backup plan, little though he liked it – and little though Xander was going to like it. He pointed to the couch and Xander stumbled obediently towards it. Giles turned hastily away, snatched up a box of tissues from his desk and dropped it by Xander’s side. Then he sat down at his desk, his back to Xander, and said, with every ounce of authority he could muster, “Jerk off, Xander. Now. While I’m here.” And with that, he rested his elbows on each side of the book in front of him on the desk, and ostentatiously covered his ears with his hands.

He had read the same two paragraphs at least six times, taking nothing useful from them, when Xander broke for the bathroom. Giles couldn’t see his face, but his posture shouted indignation. He went to make tea, wondering how long it would take Xander to muster enough self-possession to emerge and face him, and impressed when it was only a minute. At that point, though, he realised that he had absolutely no idea of what to say. Xander forestalled him.

“This sucks. It sucks more than anything has ever sucked in a whole life simply filled with suckage.” His face worked with fury.

“It sucks,” agreed Giles quietly. This was not the time to criticise teenage vocabulary. “But we’re going to get through it, Xander. I have every confidence in you. In your, in your courage. I will help you any way I can, and I promise, I promise I will think no less of you for it. I know how you must...”

“Don’t you dare.” Xander’s voice was darkly dangerous. “Don’t you _dare_ say that you know how I’m feeling. You have no fucking idea.”

“No, that, that was a stupid thing to say,” he confessed. “I have never been caught in a circumstance like, like this. But...” The words came hard but somehow it was obvious that they would have to be said. “I have had... I do know...” It wasn’t his stammer. It was the inability to find any way to say what he needed to. What Xander had the right to know. He turned to the safety of kettle and teapot; there was no conceivable possibility of his managing to say this facing Xander. “I do know about forced sex with somebody you despise, with somebody you would never.... I know about feeling powerless. About pain and shame and rage and the complete inability to believe that this is happening to you. I have experienced...” The words ran out. There was silence except for the sound of his own harsh breathing, for a dozen heartbeats.

“Angelus.” Xander’s voice cracked, dropping him from the adult Giles was so desperately trying to see him as, back to the adolescent he had so recently been. Giles fixed his gaze on his own hands.

“God, I am such a jerk. _Such_ a jerk. This isn’t just about me, is it? I’m not the only victim here. I hadn’t thought... I hadn’t thought about how it is for you. Just about how the world revolves around Xander Harris and it’s not fair.”

“It _isn’t_ fair, Xander. It isn’t fair and I can’t make it fair for you. I’ll do what I can: there are choices you can make and as far as I can I’ll leave them for you to make. They’re going to be choices between things you don’t want, but I swear, they’re your choices. I can tell you what I think, but you decide. I won’t, I won’t do anything without your permission.”

The touch on his shoulder made him jump. “It’ll be O.K., Giles. We’ll get through. We’ve dealt with sucky stuff before. And come on, we’ve got you with the brains, and the Watcher-y books, and Willow in full research-mode, and Buffy kicking some righteous vamp ass, and actually, what Willow said, it’s of the good that if we have to, you know, you’ve done it before, and you can talk me through it, right? It’s sex, it’s not an apocalypse. How hard can it be? We’ve handled worse and the way this is coming out of my mouth, maybe you should stop me talking some time soon?”

“ _Reasons to be cheerful, part three_.”

“Huh?”

He managed to turn and give Xander a rather shaky smile. “My turn to sneer at your ignorance of cultural icons. Ian Dury and the Blockheads.”

“Right. O.K. Go on, pour your tea, and have you any more soda and anything to eat, and what are we going to do next?”

“Research. More soda in that cupboard if Buffy didn’t finish it, and I have an emergency packet of chocolate hobnobs.”

“Which are what?”

“My mother sends me Red Cross parcels from home when I complain about things I can’t get here. Biscuits. If you call them cookies I won’t share them with you. They’re the best for late night research.”

“Research it is then. And Giles? If I have to do this, I don’t want to, but if I have to, I’m O.K. with it being you. Truly, I don’t despise you.” And then, in a desperately bright and cheerful that’s-enough-emotional-stuff voice, “So, I’m up for new cultural experiences: lead me to your chocolate hobnobs.”


	3. In Which it is Hinted that Giles May Be Lying

Giles had never before realised how inconvenient it was that so many of his books were in languages Xander didn’t read, and in some cases had never heard of. It meant that almost anything he found on the subject of connubial compulsions, he had to translate aloud to Xander, which was, for the first hour at least, a matter of crippling embarrassment to both of them. However, after the first illustration which they _both_ thought, from opposite sides of the table, to be upside-down, and in which despite the superficially humanoid shapes of the participants, neither of them could work out who was doing what with what to whom, Giles mentioned one of the rugby songs of his youth, and Xander, when he had finished snorting soda at the idea that Giles knew those words at all, never mind being able to make them scan and rhyme, countered with three scurrilous limericks about his late – in one case, literally – teachers at Sunnydale High. Giles sniggered in turn, and research was temporarily abandoned in favour of junk food, and for Giles a small Scotch. He didn’t dare pour one the size he actually wanted.

The Dutch courage, however, seemed to belong to Xander, perhaps gained by the intake of sugar rather than alcohol.

“O.K. Tell me what you know about what’s actually going to happen to me next. Is it gonna be like that again? Can we get away... just doing that?”

“I, I don’t know, Xander, I’m not well informed about these spells. I would only be guessing.”

“And your guesses are usually worth three of anybody else’s knowing. Guess for me. I’m sorta affected, I have the right to know.”

He had promised choices, and free choices required knowledge.

“I think the compulsion, the urge, will be stronger every time. I don’t, I don’t think that will be enough next time. I can’t even guess about how long you’ve got before the spell kicks in again.”

“But it’s gonna want more.”

“We can try doing the same. We can try.”

“You told Buffy you could think of more things without us having to... uh...”

“I’m sure you can think of some yourself.” A simple ‘yes’ might have been preferable; Xander was blushing again.

“So what’s next?”

Merciful heaven, he did _not_ want to be having this conversation and a glance told him that Xander didn’t really want it either. On the other hand, perhaps a little warning would make the actual deed less terrifying, and he had promised that there would be choices, and that they were Xander’s to make.

“Do you want to know just what’s, what I think would be next to try, or do you want to know what I think all the possibilities are?”

Xander shuddered. _“So_ don’t. Sorry, Giles, but no way am I ready for that. We’re going to find some way out of this, right?”

_No._ “Yes.”

“But maybe not straight away. I get that. O.K. Our next _immediate_ plan is...?”

“Our next plan is, try the same again and if it works, good. If it doesn’t... if it doesn’t, then I’m sorry, Xander, but I think, I think I’ll need to be touching you.”

Xander swallowed. “Touching me how?”

“Well, we could try that you lean against me while you, while you... That might be enough.”

“Christ.”

“I won’t watch,” he offered, weakly.

“Thanks. And if that’s not enough?”

“We can try increasing the, the, the touching until we find out how much it needs. How little we can get away with.”

“Fuck.”

The inappropriate bubble of laughter rose in him again. “No. That’s the last resort.”

It caught Xander out, made him laugh too. “God, I can _not_ believe that I’m having this conversation!”

“It isn’t wonderful from this side either,” he pointed out dryly.

“Bet it’s not. O.K., we agreed that we weren’t going to be embarrassed about this.” No, they had agreed that they couldn’t _afford_ to be embarrassed about it. Unfortunately, that didn’t seem to be doing anything to reduce the level of embarrassment. “What you’re saying is that I get to whack one off and you may have to help. Or join in. Or...” his courage coughed twice and ran out of fuel.

“Or do it for you. Yes.”

“And we are going to treat this as totally normal.”

“I haven’t got a better idea. I’ll hear yours if you have.” Giles hesitated. “Anything you need to know, you must ask. I don’t know what you... I know you haven’t much experience.”

Xander cringed. “Like with a man? None at all.”

“Well, yes. I’ll, I’ll try not to assume that you know things, but I don’t want to patronise you.”

Xander made a face. “Assume I know nothing.”

“There’s no shame in innocence,” said Giles sharply. “You’re doing fine. But the spell’s been cast on you, and only you know how it makes you feel. I’ll do what I can but you need to tell me when it hits and how strongly.”

Xander was suddenly thoughtful. “I don’t think it can be later than tomorrow morning. I mean, when I wake up...” He looked sideways at Giles.

“You’ll have an erection.” He was getting better at the blunt statements.

“Uh... yeah.”

“Of course you bloody will, you’re a man.” Suddenly Giles was tired of this; perhaps a little annoyance would carry them past the embarrassment. “You wake up hard. It may surprise you to hear it, Xander: so do I. Men do. So yes, I think you’re right: tomorrow morning latest.”

“Unless we work right through at the researching.”

“I – if that’s what you want. I will if you want us to. I can see that if we find something quickly, that’s the best option. If we don’t find something quickly, then tomorrow we’re both tired and perhaps not in a good way to cope with this becoming more difficult. Your choice, I’m afraid.”

Xander’s mouth drooped. “Yeah.” He looked across the table. “Maybe another book or two.”

They researched.

When Xander actually fell asleep on top of one of the books, Giles went and retrieved a blanket and pillow for him. “Xander? Lie down. I’ll, I’ll keep going.”

“I – what? No. Can we... I’m – sorry Giles, I’m awake. I’m awake. I can go on.”

“There’s no need,” said Giles gently, and hurried on before Xander could hear that as meaning that he’d found something. “You’re too tired; you’ll make a mistake or miss something. Go to sleep. I’ll keep looking.”

Xander shook his head stubbornly. “Either we both go on or we both stop. You said we were in this together.”

He sighed. “Your choice.”

There was a long silence. “I gotta stop,” admitted Xander. “I don’t... Giles, I’m so tired I hurt. Even if it means... do you mind? I mean, that’s dumb, I know you mind, but if we have to in the morning...”

He came to the rescue. “I told you, whatever we have to do, we’ll do. Go on, you get through the bathroom; there’s a spare toothbrush in the cabinet. I’ll clear up here. I think you’re right, I’m tired too; it’s the stress as much as anything.”

By the time Xander came back, Giles had had another thought. “If you wake up for anything – it’s not the most comfortable couch in the world – go to the bathroom. You know – you must know – if you wake with a full bladder...”

“And wood, and you can’t come till you go or go till you come.” Xander grinned. “Good thought, big guy.”

He grinned back. “Just a complication we don’t need. Wake me if you need... if the compulsion...”

“Giles? The word you want is ‘whatever’, accompanied by a vague wave of the hand. You’ve been years in California; I can’t believe you don’t speak the language yet.”

“Cheeky sod. Good night, Xander.”

“Night, big guy. It’ll all be better in the morning.”

He spoke enough of the local language to have an answer to that, but he kept it to himself. _Not._

Every Watcher was accustomed to snatching sleep where he could; battling creatures of the night played hob with getting a regular eight hours, and it was nothing new to Giles to go to bed late and rise early. His dreams were disturbed and when he found himself awake and listening for any sound from Xander, he took himself off to the shower. His own morning erection hinted that it would like some attention; the thought that almost certainly he would soon have Xander needing his help...

He soaped his hand and drew, from a memory never mind how old, the woman who had given him his first ever blow job. Her skills were no doubt exaggerated in his recollection, but she had been blonde, slight, blue-eyed, Dudley accented, older and more experienced than him and not in any way like a dark, nervous Sunnydale teenager.

If Xander had to lean against Giles and wank, he could at least be excused Giles’ own hard-on digging into him.

He spent most of a pointless hour with the books before Xander roused, heavy eyed and desirable, muttering something which might have been ‘good morning’ and staggering off towards the bathroom. When he came back, fully dressed, he looked properly awake at least; he also looked embarrassed again. Giles went for flat practicality.

“Do we need to take action?” He thought that was a phrase without too many emotional overtones, but Xander’s expression was awkward.

“Um... yeah. And it’s changed.”

“Changed how?” He put down his pen, preparing to give Xander his full attention.

“I can sorta tell what’s not gonna work. That from last night? Won’t work again. I’m not sure how I know, but I do.” He sent a worried look towards Giles. “Sounds dumb.”

Giles wrinkled his nose. “Not really. The spell is pushing you on; it will presumably give you hefty clues. Do you... do you want to try the same again anyway? Just in case?”

Xander shook his head. “It’s actually uncomfortable to think about it, and it gives me little... I dunno, like sparks? Or, you know, like when you touch the car in hot weather and get a static shock off it?” He slumped down on the couch. “I – it’s just beginning to sink in, I think. Last night, I was so – I just didn’t really believe it, and then, what we did, and I was angry, and then we were making plans and... and suddenly this morning it’s real, I’ve gotta just deal somehow, and I don’t want to, but I’ve got this really solid boner and it’s uncomfortable, and I don’t know how to ask you or anything...”

“You say, ‘Giles, I need some help now,’” said Giles, briskly, getting up from the desk and coming over to sit beside Xander. “Turn a little and lean back against my chest. I’m just going to hold you. I don’t suppose the spell can tell who you think about: Amy Yip at the waterpark, was it?”

Xander yelped and jumped; “It can! It can tell and it didn’t like that!”

“Damn. Sorry. All right. Close your eyes, don’t think at all except about what you’re doing and how it feels. I’m not looking.”

He closed his own eyes, kept his hands still on Xander’s chest and tried not to allow his imagination to screen his own particular Xan-starring porn film on the inside of his eyelids. The sound effects were bad enough and surely a nineteen year old, even under these circumstances, would be quicker than this first thing in the morning?

“Giles?” Xander’s voice was strained. “It’s not enough. Can you...”

He blindly slid his left hand across Xander’s chest to his arm, and followed the line of it down to Xander’s wrist, wrapping his own hand around Xander’s.

“No... like...” and Xander eased his fingers loose, twining them through Giles’ so that their joined hands wrapped around a hot, damp erection. Giles heard his breath come short; he hoped that Xander was too preoccupied to notice. Their knuckles banged and there was a moment’s awkwardness and then the pad of his thumb was skating over a slick cockhead and Xander was making a small breathy noise which caused Giles to tighten the grip of his right arm around the heaving chest, and to turn his own head until Xander’s hair brushed his cheek.

“Oh God, nearly...” panted Xander desperately, and Giles thought of the compulsion, and the requirement for obedience, pushed his thumb hard against the ridge of flesh and then again up the tender tip and whispered urgently, “Come for me, Xander. Come for me _now_.”

The gasp and hot wet spill were immediate; he eased his grip at once but Xander’s fingers tightened for two more long slow strokes and Giles found himself noting that as something useful for later _if he had to touch Xander later, not at all, no, not at all for his private fantasies._ He dared then to open his eyes, his head still courteously turned aside, scanning for the tissue box left from the previous night, and grabbing it with his right hand, dropping it on Xander’s thigh. Xander made another breathy sound which went straight to Giles’ balls, and which turned into a strangled laugh.

“Always practical, Giles. God. That was... Fuck. Sorry.”

 “Don’t apologise. You’ve got nothing to apologise for.”

“Well, but...”

“I should be apologising to you.”

“Do you a deal, Giles. No apologising either way. Like you said, neither of us did this, we’re dealing with it, and we do whatever we have to.”

“Deal.”

“Ew. I should have left my shirt off.” He wiped Giles’ hand neatly, and ran a wad of tissues up his bare stomach and the edge of his shirt, before sitting up and quickly refastening his jeans.

“I’ll lend you a clean one. And I think, I think we should go out this morning. I’ll need to shop, milk and, and things, and you’ll want more soda, and we could go round by your parents’ house and you could pack a bag. Just for a day or two, just in case.” Neither of them would catch the other’s eye.

“Yeah. Good idea. I bet you haven’t got a Twinkie in the house, have you?”

“You’d win. But we’ve got time for breakfast first, if you can, if you can survive on cereal and toast.”

“Sure, I’ll just...” and he looked at the mess of tissues and took off for the bathroom without finishing the sentence; Giles went to the kitchen to wash his hands, and splash cold water on his face before retreating upstairs to find Xander a shirt. They could say all they liked that they weren’t going to be embarrassed; it made no odds. Xander was mortified; Giles was...

Giles was pretending that he wasn’t hard again.


	4. In Which There Is Escalation

 “I’ll be an hour,” said Giles. Xander nodded, but he looked uneasy, and Giles hesitated.

“Xander, is it all right? The, the spell isn’t telling you anything else? I mean, do we think you’ll be all right for an hour?”

Xander looked... distant for a moment. “I’m O.K., I think. I mean, last night, I was able to hold it off for several hours.”

“This morning?” asked Giles, shrewdly.

Xander made a face. “It was stronger, and I don’t think I could have stood it as long, but... I think if I’d had to, I’d have been able to hold out a bit more. I should have done, I suppose. I mean, the later we make it every time, the better, right?”

Giles considered. “Up to a point. But I don’t think there’s anything to be gained by hanging on so long that you’re in pain. It might actually make it” he heard the word ‘harder’ approaching and hastily substituted, “more difficult. I mean, even under more normal circumstances, if you wait too long, you can actually end up not able to, to...”

“Blue balls, yeah.”

“Well, quite.” He was going to have to recover the slang of his youth and stop being, he thought, quite so prissy about using it. “I appreciate that you don’t want to do anything further – but I don’t want... oh _bloody_ fucking hell.”

“What? And believe me, that’s not a phrase I expect to hear out of your mouth on a Sunnydale street corner in daylight.”

“I’m, I’m trying to avoid giving you any specific instructions, or telling you that I want or don’t want things. You, you can’t make free choices that way.”

Xander looked at him oddly. “Thanks. O.K., you were about to express an opinion. Not a desire, right?”

“My _opinion_ is that you will need to find a balance between hurrying the spell along by giving in too readily, and making yourself uncomfortable, perhaps to the stage of actual harm, by trying to hold out too long. And really, that’s up to you. How you feel. You just have to...”

“Tell you, yeah. I think I’m good for at least an hour, which given how long we’ve spent talking about it, is probably just as well. And the next... the next occasion... I just let you do it?”

“If the spell will accept that. And if it’s acceptable to you.”

“Gotta be, really.”

“I’m so...” but Xander had lifted a hand.

“Not using the S-word, G-man. Not your fault. But when we find out who did this, we’re gonna hurt them, right?”

He simply nodded, but in his head, he made the promise that whoever had done this to Xander was going to pay for it, and was going to find the cost very high indeed.   

“Then go, hit the mall and I’ll find myself a couple of clean shirts and think about what the hell I’m going to tell my mom. Not that I think she’ll ask, even if I say I’ll not be around for a day or two.”

Giles winced a little. He never knew how to respond to Xander’s comments about his parents; agreeing sounded like criticism of them, and he was quite well aware that Xander sniped about them himself but wasn’t likely to accept anybody else doing it. “An hour. Anything you want to add to your already incomprehensible side of the list?”

“If you see anything made up entirely of artificial additives and sugar, get some.”

He gave an exaggerated shudder, just to make Xander laugh, and shook his head. “Get out of my car, you degenerate. Go and pack your clean socks. If you’re not ready when I come back I’ll go home without you.”

“Nah, you won’t. Know you better than that. You won’t abandon me.”

He wasn’t altogether sure what to make of that.

Xander was indeed ready when he returned; he was standing on the corner with a bag at his feet, and he was fidgeting as if already primed with the additives he had been laughing about. He had the door open before Giles had the handbrake on.

“Is, is everything all right?”

He got a nod, but Xander had his head down and his eyes hidden behind his fringe, and Giles could read that, he found, as clearly as everybody else could read his spectacle-polishing. “What’s happened? Was your mother... did she object?”

“Wasn’t there. I left a note. Can we go?”

He put the car in gear and looked over his shoulder for a gap in the traffic; “Are you... do we have a problem?”

Somehow that seemed to be the key: the use of ‘we’ perhaps, rather than ‘you’ or the non-specific ‘everything’.”

“After you left, I went in, it was all cool for... maybe a quarter of an hour? And then I began to think I was late. I knew I wasn’t, but I was hurrying more and more because I was _late_ and you had told me not to be, and... Giles, God only knows what’s in the bag, I couldn’t concentrate enough to think about what I needed, I just needed to be out of there and... I’ve been on the sidewalk for twenty minutes, I kept looking at my watch and thinking, he can’t _possibly_ be back for ages yet, go back in and pack _properly_ , but I couldn’t do it. And then it got like I was more and more nervous, I couldn’t get my breath, my chest went tight, my heart was thumping...”

His voice was going high, and tight; Giles said non-judgmentally, “Sounds like you had a panic attack. Are you all right now?”

“Yes. No. Sorta. It’s better, but it’s not good.”

“All right. Just, just relax and try to breathe normally. Nice and steadily. Don’t pant, don’t try to breathe particularly deeply. Are you dizzy?”

“A bit.”

“Want me to stop the car?”

“No. No. I just feel... God, that was stupid. I’ve probably got three single socks and... I think I packed a razor. Maybe.”

Giles smiled comfortingly. “Never mind. I can lend you whatever you’ve not got. I could have done that anyway, I just thought you’d be more comfortable with your own things. I do actually possess clothes which aren’t tweed.”

“Seen you in jeans. Look good on you.” From his horrified expression, that was something Xander wanted not to have said; Giles thought it would be kinder not to comment.

“Well, you can wear them if need be. They’ll hang on you, you’re a lot thinner than I am, but they’ll keep you decent. And I have a drawer full of shirts promoting bands you’ve never heard of. More new cultural experiences. I got you your Twinkies, and a simply disgraceful amount of chocolate, and various carbonated drinks composed, as far as I can tell, of caffeine and sugar and not much else.”

“Soda. Just say soda. You did last night.”

“If I must, but as far as I’m concerned, soda is what you use to clean drains.”

“Pizza?”

“No. I refuse to eat pizza two days on the trot. I wasn’t sure if you ate fish, which is what I tend to buy for myself, so I bought the ingredients for lasagne.”

“Ingredients?”

“Yes, you know, mince, and onions, and cheese. Garlic. Tomatoes.”

“Mince?”

Giles rolled his eyes. “Hamburger, if you insist.”

“To make _lasagne_?”

“What do you make it from?”

“Lasagne comes in packets, frozen.”

“You really have been brought up by... hyenas. That packet stuff is not lasagne.” He parked the car, neatly. “Take one of those bags with you. There will be salad. You will eat it. Christopher Giles asserted until he was eight that all vegetables except peas were poisonous, so the family knows all the tricks. I can get steamed beetroot and spinach into you if I try. If you behave nicely, I’ll let you away with lettuce and cucumber.”

“Have you been drinking?”

“Unfortunately not. This is what happens when I take an hour away from researching: I get withdrawal symptoms.” He was rewarded: Xander had stopped looking quite so drawn and panicky, and was beginning to laugh.

“Shall I make lunch then? I can do sandwiches, and you can open your books and calm yourself down again. I can’t cope with a frivolous Giles, it goes against the very nature of the universe.”

“Yes, but let’s get this stuff put away first, shall we? Oh, and there’s a bar of British chocolate in there, a brand you won't recognise. If you touch it, I will probably stake you. It came from the specialist import shop, it cost nearly as much as the rest of the stuff put together and you’re much too young for it. Think of it like you do my Scotch: you can look, but don’t touch.”

“What’s so special about it?”

“British chocolate is generally higher in cocoa solids than American chocolate. Stronger. I prefer it.”

“Except when we’re selling for the band,” suggested Xander slyly; Giles aimed a not very serious clip at his ear and Xander ducked, laughing. “O.K., O.K., I won’t steal your candy. Where does the bleach go?”

They finished putting things away, and Giles left Xander making sandwiches while he went through boxes of books left over from the library. He noticed that Xander came to the door once, and looked at him, but he was struggling with packing tape at the time, and by the time he had detached himself, Xander had gone back to the kitchen. He followed, and found Xander looking blankly at sliced ham as if he had never seen it before.

“Is...”

“I need to be where you are,” said Xander, flatly.

“Pardon?”

“That’s... it was the same as this morning. Not as strong, but the same. When you were... when I’m not in the same room as you, I panic. I’m O.K., for ten, fifteen minutes, and then I panic.”

“Christ.”

“Yeah. That’s going to... to cramp our style a bit.” He didn’t turn to Giles, but even in profile his mouth was quivering. It came instinctively to Giles to reach over, remove the knife from his hand, and pull him into a loose embrace.

“It will be all right.” He put into it all the conviction he had used in telling his nephew, aged five, that there was no monster under the bed. (It had been a very small monster, no older than the child above it, and equally terrified; later, he had restored the monster to its parent, and denied everything to his sister-in-law. His brother had hidden in the kitchen, laughing.)

“Will it?” Xander was clutching at him as tightly as Christopher had done, and much the same way, ducking his head under Giles’ chin until Giles hugged him hard.

“I promise.” How he was going to come through on that promise, he had not the slightest idea. “And for the moment, well, you’ve identified the problem, and yes, I agree, it’s a bloody nuisance. But it’s nothing worse than a nuisance, Xander. Now we know, I’ll tell you if I’m going anywhere so if it gets too much you can come after me.” He found he was running his fingers through the soft hair at Xander’s nape; he felt the boy – young man – sigh and relax against him. “Is it better when we’re touching?”

Tension again. “Ah... yeah.”

“We can probably manage something on that, then. You can lean on me while you read, or sit beside me and make sure your shoulder is against mine.”

“Buffy’s going to have a cow if we...”

He nudged to get the dark head up. “You can sit in my lap and we’ll watch her squirm.”

It got a rather shaky giggle. “Yeah. Sorry. I’m O.K. now.”

“What did we say about ‘sorry’? We’ll cope.” He felt the shift of weight which told him that Xander had realised what he was doing and wanted not to be doing it, and let go, with a pang. “I’ll cope much better,” he said plaintively, “if you feed me.”    

The afternoon, was spent in research. Pointless research. They found nothing concrete, nothing which even hinted at useful directions to move next. The telephone, towards the end of the afternoon, made them both jump. It was Buffy.

“Hey Giles? We’re coming to join the book party; want us to bring food?”

“No, thank you. I’m going to cook. Xander thinks I can’t.” Xander, who was sitting on the floor and leaning on his leg, looked up and stuck out his tongue. “I’ll make enough for you and Willow as well, if you like. Did you see Willy?”

“Nope. He wasn’t there. Weirdness happening, Giles. Willy’s not there, the place is closed up. I’ll go out later, patrol a bit, see what I can find, but it’s like... it’s like not Hellmouthy at all.”

Giles frowned. “We need answers, Buffy. We’re not finding anything here. Does Willow... has she found anything?”

“She says not, but she’s got a couple of leads. We’ll be over before dark, ‘kay? An hour, maybe?” 

He put the phone down. “Did you...?”

“Heard, yeah. Um... Just thinking, Giles. When the girls come, they’ll likely be here until midnight, yeah?”

“Mm?”

 Xander took a deep breath. “Iwon’tlastuntilthen.”

“You’re feeling it now?”

He nodded. “Reckon I could manage another hour. Maybe two. No more.”

“Half an hour, then? Buffy won’t be early, she never is. Come on, we’ll get the lasagne into the oven and then we’ll... we’ll deal with it.”

Giles had often thought that Xander’s courage made up for any of his other failings; he saw no reason to change his mind. Xander made no attempt to string out the preparation of dinner, and when the dish was finally in the oven, he followed Giles back to the couch without any more hesitation that was evident in his slightly uneven breathing. Giles diverted to the desk and retrieved a tube from a drawer, holding it out nervously.

“Are you... is this all right?”

Xander licked suddenly dry lips. “Is it... I don’t generally...”

“I bought it this morning.” Another type now resided in the drawer of the bedside table, in a container more easily managed with one hand. No need to mention that to Xander yet. “I just thought, we don’t know how many times... and I don’t want you to be sore, because I don’t, I don’t touch you exactly the way you touch yourself. The way you like. I mean, I think the spell will _make_ you like it, but... I was afraid that maybe the spell wouldn’t let you tell me if I, if I was too rough. Is this all right?”

Xander took the tube. “I – I don’t know. Is it... is it good?”

Giles snorted; he really had to break himself of this habit of inappropriate laughter. “It’s not my favourite. You can’t get that here, and curiously, I find I don’t want to ask my mother to get it for me. That’s, that’s good enough. I won’t use it if you’d rather I didn’t.”

“No, whatever. Whatever.”

“And... it’s not an order, I’m just asking. Will you please tell me, if, if...” The sentence wasn’t going anywhere useful, but Xander was nodding, obviously keeping up.

“Well, then, shall, shall we...”

This time Xander did think to peel his shirt off, before unbuttoning his jeans and turning his back on Giles. “Can we... if we sit again...”

“Yes,” agreed Giles, finding himself with an armful of half naked Xander, who was pushing his jeans and shorts far enough down to let Giles... to let Giles avert his eyes and open the silver tube. God knew, Xander was being allowed little enough dignity; Giles could at least refrain from staring. One glance, to show him where he was going, and he wrapped his slippery palm around the already hard cock which jumped in his hand. Xander squawked, and Giles tightened his grip in surprise.

“What?”

“Just... Oh.” And more softly, “oh.”

“Cold?”

“No.”

“Just odd?” It must feel odd, to have someone he knew the way he knew Giles, touch him so intimately.

“Yeah. God. That’s...”

Giles tried one long stroke and Xander bucked. Giles grinned. “Like that?” He wasn’t sure himself if he meant ‘do you like that?’ or ‘shall I do it like that?’ but it didn’t seem to matter.

“God, yeah!”

It was the spell, he reminded himself, only the spell. The spell would make Xander like _anything_ he did. Nonetheless, it was a matter of pride to make it as good as he possibly could. He ruthlessly quashed the voice of his conscience which hinted that he should be aiming for speed and efficiency, even though he knew that he couldn’t make it last too long without risking the arrival on the scene of Buffy. He put in a slow twist and got a most gratifying gasp; he let go entirely and simply drifted his palm across the head, and Xander whimpered. Unprompted, his right hand shifted to find a nipple and tease it to hardness, and Xander twitched against him; when he pinched and then rubbed, Xander thrashed and made a garbled and incomprehensible noise which closed Giles’ hand. A few hard tugs and Xander cried out, tensed, and arched back; Giles remembered the two long strokes and felt the shuddering climax rip through the body half in his lap.

He hadn’t expected laughter; wasn’t sure whether or not to be offended by it.

“Are... are you all right?”

“Yeah. Oh God yeah. That was... Can we call your mom?”

His mind double de-clutched and entirely missed the gear change. “What?”

“If you’re telling me there’s some other stuff which feels better than that, I gotta have some. If you won’t ask your mom, I will.”

He leaned his forehead against the back of Xander’s neck and gave way to laughter himself. “I was afraid you wouldn’t like it.”

“Doesn’t appear to be a problem. Not like... um...” he muttered something.

“I beg your pardon?”

“’S not like being touched by a girl at all.”

“Ah. Well... that’s probably the spell.” And more years of practice than Xander had been alive. 

“Mm. Are the tissues...”

“Here. I should have bought some more, I think.”

“God. Giles, is this the weirdest conversation ever?”

“Yes. Indubitably. Would you like to put some clothes on before Buffy and Willow get here?”


	5. In Which Xander Learns that Jam is Not Jelly and Giles Does Handbrake Turns

They were decently ensconced on the couch, surrounded by books, when Buffy and Willow arrived, looking bewildered.

“There isn’t a vamp in town,” announced Buffy, “and what’s that smell?”

“Dinner,” said Xander, standing up and stretching; Giles hastily averted his eyes from the triangle of skin between the top of Xander’s jeans and the last button of his shirt, a triangle which ought to be licked. “And it should be ready now, right, Giles?”

It was disturbing how impressed they all seemed to be by what he thought of as a very workaday meal; he made the resolution, not for the first time, to try and persuade them towards slightly healthier food than their standard choices. He did allow himself to feel a little smug at their approval of dessert.

“What’s that under the sponge?” enquired Buffy, leaning over to watch him wield the serving spoon. “Some sort of jelly?”

Xander shook his head. “I’m learning the G-man’s rules. He went all ‘Englishman’s home is his castle’ in the kitchen, and if you call it jelly you won’t get any. It’s jam. I also know that I must never ask him if he wants cream in his tea because cream only goes in coffee, and milk goes in tea. Also that raspberry zinger isn’t tea, it’s a... I’ve forgotten, but it isn’t tea and mustn’t be called tea. And chocolate hobnobs are not cookies, they’re biscuits. I don’t know what biscuits are. Oh, and you don’t wash up for dinner; washing up is the dishes afterwards.”

“What’s wrong with calling it jelly?”

“That’s not what it is. Jelly is different,” said Giles. “I’m prepared to refer to jelly doughnuts when I’m on your turf. Currently you’re on mine, so that’s jam. Willow, can I interest you in dessert?”

“Jam sponge pudding?” enquired Willow, grasping the principle instantly. “Yes please. Thank you. Xander, did you see what he did to the lasagne to make it go all nummy like that?”

“Yeah, he cooked it. From scratch. All of it. There was a magic ingredient went in with the cheese; I didn’t see what it was.”

“Nutmeg,” said Giles. They looked blankly at him; he glared back until Xander broke and sniggered.

“Brought up by hyenas, all of you.”

“He threatened me with spinach earlier.”

Willow gasped. “He didn’t! Giles, how could you possibly be so cruel?”

“Practice,” he said dryly. “Cruelty to Xander, quite straightforward. I’m working up to being cruel to you and Buffy. Cruelty in the form of strange foreign foods. Tomorrow, it’s Yorkshire puddings, and Xander has to learn how to make Toad in the Hole. Go on, finish the sponge. I cooked; you can wash up. The oven dishes will both need to soak.”

It might have been the absence of the artificial additives to which they were accustomed, but all three of them were giggly and rather silly around the sink; it made him feel old. He made tea, left them to the clearing up and went wearily back to yet another book bound in something he didn’t really want to identify, telling him nothing he wanted to know. He faced it: all the potentialities here were unsatisfactory. If he found nothing, he was going to have to – he faced the fact with the word – _fuck_ Xander, who was holding up under the threat remarkably well, but who plainly wanted nothing of the kind. If he found a cure, Xander would escape having experienced nothing more than many straight boys tried once or twice out of curiosity at his age, but with the episode not one of juvenile experimentation and therefore easily discarded, but involving a man more than twice his age and not his choice. In either case, Giles would be left with a heap of regrets.

Honesty was painful; he had been denying to himself how badly he wanted Xander. He had admitted, in his head, the erotic fascination; he had never permitted himself to act upon it in any public way, nor had he ever allowed himself to think of it as anything other than a physical fantasy. By allowing himself a dream Xander as an amatory companion he had tried to deny how much more he wanted: how badly he wanted the whole Xander, the funny, brave, imaginative ally who attracted and infuriated him in equal measure. Who was _straight_ , he reminded himself harshly, and not yet twenty, and who would no doubt be horrified to know himself Giles’ wanking material, however well he had received the news that Giles was not totally straight himself.

Xander might as well have a huge sign over his head: Not Available. And this – this _bloody_ spell could not possibly have a good outcome for Giles. He would save Xander – and regret forever afterwards all that he had not been able to do with him – or he would fail Xander, have his physical desires granted amid an excess of guilt for the failure, and their relationship would not, could not be recoverable afterwards. Damned again, Rupert, he told himself blackly.

It also occurred to him that after this – that already during this – Xander’s Not Available sign would also hang over the imaginary Xander who had shared Giles’ bed more than once. The real Xander had taken over, and Giles would always be aware that the real Xander didn’t want to be there. It was prudish, no doubt, to worry about lack of consent in a fantasy figure, but he feared that it would spoil his imaginings nonetheless.

It might have been the introspection, coupled with a hefty dose of sexual frustration, which spoiled his temper; certainly he was snappy when the others came to join him, and after a couple of sharp remarks on his part, they left him alone. Xander in particular kept eyeing him sideways, and seemed nearly as twitchy as he was himself, probably on account of the quantities of caffeine he was imbibing. The overturning of the half full can seemed, in retrospect, wholly inevitable.

“Oh for heaven’s sake! How many times do I have to tell you to keep your bloody pop _away from my books!_ It’s not difficult! A little consideration occasionally for somebody other than yourself, or is that too much to ask? The possible recollection that some of these books are more valuable than... what’s the point of talking? You never bloody listen, do you?”

He took himself off for the means to mop up the spill, ignoring Xander’s stammered apology; when he came back only Buffy was there, and she rather pointedly went on working through the book on her lap. He had returned to the kitchen to wring out the cloth when Willow appeared behind him.

“Giles?” She sounded unusually accusatory. “Xander’s crying in the bathroom.” Loud and clear came the unspoken ‘and it’s your fault’.

He stared at her for a moment while his brain caught up. “ _Fuck!”_

She moved out of his way; he glanced back. “I beg your pardon, Willow, that was...”

He knocked on the bathroom door; there was no response. “Xander? May... may I come in?”

He waited a moment and tried the door; Xander was drying his face. He kept his chin down but Giles could see that his eyes were red.

“I’m done here, sorry, I’m in your way.”  

He backed up against the door. “Xander...”

“I didn’t do it on purpose.” It was hardly whispered.

“I know.”

Xander bit his lip, and his face twisted; Giles reached for him, half expecting to have his hand batted away. “Here, here, come here, Xander, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have shouted. I didn’t think, you probably needed to be touching, didn’t you? You should have said... you couldn’t say, could you, because I was being a wanker.” Xander’s face was hidden in his shoulder and he was trembling; Giles stroked his back, gently. “I’m a total pillock, and Willow’s going to kill me. She was wearing a face I haven’t seen before and I don’t like it. I need you to tell her it’s all right, Xander. I’m scared of Willow when she looks like that. She looks like my mother; I think I’m grounded until I die.” This was normally Xander’s rôle, clowning to cheer up the others, but Giles would do it if Xander needed him to.

He got a rather shaky giggle, and Xander turned his head. “Willow’s Resolve face?”

“No, this appeared to be Willow’s You’re Upsetting Xander And I’m Going To Rip Your Bollocks Off And Wear Them As Earrings face. She thinks I’m abusing you, and I am. I promised I’d look after you and I’m not doing it.”

The curls against his shoulder shook. “I’m a screw-up. I can’t do anything right, and your book...”

“Bugger the bloody book,” said Giles deliberately. Xander jumped.

“Giles!”

“Well, it’s a sodding book. I’ve mopped it up. It didn’t warrant me tearing quite such a strip off you. I’m sorry.”

Xander managed a twisted smile. “Thought we weren’t apologising?”

“We won’t apologise for what we have to do. That doesn’t give me carte blanche to shout at you for what was an accident. I’m sorry for that.”

Xander squirmed. “I _was_ careless... you’re entitled to be mad.”

Giles sighed. “Xander, think. How many times have you spilt something on my books, or got tomato sauce on them, or chocolate? And yes, I get annoyed, because yes, it _is_ careless. I don’t like it. But I don’t generally reduce you to tears. It’s the spell: it’s magnifying your response to everything. I’m exasperated. I _was_ annoyed. I was also rude. I didn’t think about what effect that would have on you with the spell factored in, and I should have done. Forgive me?”  

But Xander was crying again, face against Giles’ neck, and all Giles could do was hold him, petting him and whispering reassurances. It didn’t last long. Xander took a couple of long shuddering breaths, and pulled away to turn to the basin, splashing cold water over his heated skin.

“I fucking _hate_ this, not knowing what I’m feeling because it’s me and what’s the spell.”

“I know,” agreed Giles. “And it keeps changing, and we’re a beat behind every time. We’ll catch up again. I need to be more thoughtful about the effect of what I’m saying on you. No yelling about the books.”

Xander contrived a grin. “You’ll never do it. You always yell about the books. If you’re not to yell, you’ll go off pop; it’ll be bad for your blood pressure.”

“Nonsense.” Giles, relieved to see the teasing Xander he knew, teased back. “I’ll just skip the yelling and move straight to Plan B, where I put you over my knee.”

The back of his head met the door with a crash; for a split second he thought ‘not bloody concussion _again_ ’ before he rebounded into a frantic body. Xander was clawing at him, scrabbling, apparently trying to climb into his arms, biting at his neck and whining like a distressed puppy, humping against his thigh and throwing both of them off balance so that they ricocheted around the room knocking things over. He felt something twinge in his back as he managed to catch himself on the towel rail, pinning Xander’s arms to his sides and bracing them both against the wall.

“Whoa!”

There was a cautious tap at the door. “Guys?” came Willow’s voice. “Is everything all right in there?”

“Fine, Willow.” He was surprised by how calm his voice was. “Just knocked something over.”

There was an unconvinced silence. “Xander? You O.K.?”

“Yeah. Thanks, Will, we’re fine. Be out in a minute.”

“You sure?”

The imp which made Giles laugh at all the wrong times was working overtime; he leaned, shaking, to get his mouth to Xander’s ear. “Say yes. She’s wearing the bollocks for earrings face, I just know she is.”

Xander was shaking with laughter too; “I’m good, Will. We’ve just... knocked some stuff down. Give us a moment to tidy up.”

They waited, frozen in place, until they heard her move away, and then leaned on each other, giggling silently; Giles wasn’t sure if it was the spell or the relief, but the last time he remembered feeling this way it had involved one of Randall’s fat roll-ups.

“What happened there?”

“You threatened to spank me.”

“The spell didn’t like it?” And had prompted Xander to placate him with sex?

Xander was suddenly flaming red again. “I – the spell liked it. The spell liked it way too much. The spell thought it was a good idea.”

“Oh dear Lord.”

“Yeah. I vote we don’t tell Buffy.”

“Seconded. What have we spilled that’s making this place smell like a brothel?”

“Is this what a brothel smells like? How do you know?”

“Shut up and pick up the shampoo. Oh good Lord, it was that horrible floral aftershave... it came free with something, I wouldn’t like you to think I’d pay for anything that poncy.”

“’s O.K., I know you wouldn’t, you always smell good, except when you’ve been slimed by something. And shall we just pretend I didn’t say that?”

“Spell.”

“Spell.”

“Are you all right to come out now? We really do need to do some research.”

“Yeah, I’m good.”

Buffy looked up as they came back into the sitting room. “You guys O.K.? And what’s that smell?” She stared at them quizzically as they sniggered. “O.K., do I want to know what you’ve been doing? And that’s one of those questions Giles talks about, where I don’t really want an answer, right?”

He grinned at her. “No, that wasn’t a rhetorical question, that was a ‘nonne’ question, which expects the answer ‘no’. Would you mind moving to the chair, Buffy? Xander needs to be close to me and it’s easier if we can share the couch.”

She moved without comment, but a slightly wary expression, as if expecting him to do something dangerous and unpredictable. Sitting down and slinging an arm across Xander’s shoulder presumably counted as dangerous and unpredictable because her expression changed to one of mild dismay. Xander waved dismissively at her. “Not bad touching, Buff. Like he says, I need to be close or the spell makes me panic. We need a cure, because I don’t think Giles will survive the football season if he has to go to matches with me.”

“Xan, you don’t go to football matches.”

“You don’t think it would be worth it just to see Giles suffer?”

“If you make me go, I’m not paying for the popcorn. And for every football match, I’ll make you stay up through the night and listen to the cricket commentary.”

“Do we even get that here?”

“BBC World Service, bringing civilisation to the colonies even in the twentieth century.”

“Does it have popcorn?”

“No. It has cake. Traditionally it has home-made cake.”

“New cultural experiences _and_ cake? I am so up for that.”

“If you two have quite finished playing,” said Willow in mock disapproval, “there’s research to be done.”

Giles rolled his eyes sulkily. “Whatever.”

Xander snorted and Giles grinned again; Buffy and Willow stared at them both. “He thinks he’s grounded,” Xander confided to Buffy. “Is he grounded, Willow? What for?”

“Bad language,” she said primly. “Books, Giles. Read some.”

They researched for another hour, without success. Buffy broke first. “Giles? Can I not just go and fetch a vampire? The research-y thing, so not happening, and somebody out there has to know what’s going on.”

“I, I think perhaps you had better, yes. Willow, will you drive?”

They both stared at him. “You’re not coming?”

“I, I think not.” There was an awkward silence, and Xander gave in.

“He can’t. He can’t leave me for more than a few minutes or I wig. Completely. I’m not going to be any use on patrol because I can’t be where he isn’t and I can’t concentrate for long. Go. Bring us back a couple of vamps; you know the sort we like. And ice cream! Giles has no ice cream. Bring ice cream. Vamps and ice cream. That’s what we need.”

“Or, or any sort of demon, Buffy. Whatever’s out there. Any of the ones which will talk. If they don’t talk, make a note of what they are and we can see if it gives us a clue. We’ll go on with the books.”

It was surprisingly comfortable, reading with an armful of Xander. He didn’t permit himself to think about how easily he could grow to like it, to enjoy the weight against his chest and his arm draped over Xander’s shoulder, his hand on Xander’s...

“Um, Giles? Not that I don’t like it, but the touching, not really working with the whole concentration thing?”

One brief second in which he thought “What?” and he was suddenly aware of himself, of his arm, of his hand, of _Oh God_ his thumb flicking lightly to and fro over Xander’s cotton covered nipple.

His book went one way, pen and paper another as he snatched his arm away and scrabbled free of Xander. “I, I, I do apologise... not at all deliberate, not concentrating at all, never intended...”

“Giles – Giles! I know. Not serious, just fiddling. But not helpful.”

“No, well, I, I, I think I...”

“Think you should make tea. You haven’t had tea in over an hour. It makes me nervous when you don’t drink your tea.”

Xander was laughing at him, and the part of him which wasn’t doubled up in embarrassment grinned smugly because Xander was happy despite _because of_ being with Giles. But he went to make tea, obediently.

They waited for the girls. And waited. And waited. Midnight came and Xander stopped smiling and began to look uncomfortable again, although he said nothing.

“Giles?”

“Buffy? Where... where have you been? Is everything all right?”

“We’ve been everywhere, and my feet are killing me. Giles, what the hell is going on?”

“I, I was hoping you were going to tell me.”

“There isn’t a vamp in Sunnydale. Not a demon. Not a monster. Nothing. Zip. Zero. Zilch. We went to every single cemetery, Giles. All twelve. We went to the Bronze. We went to eight churches. We went to three parks, the bus station, the school, what’s left of it... we saw nothing scary. And that’s scary, Giles. That’s really scary.”

“You saw _nothing_?”

“We saw Mr and Mrs Carnegie sneaking around and we thought they... well, actually, we think they sneak up on kids making out in the bushes. We disturbed so many sets of kids making out in the bushes that they think the sneaking up is Willow and me. We met a dangerous French poodle and a variety of cats. And that’s it. And Xan, I’m really sorry, but I am fit for no more and neither is Willow. We gotta go home. More research tomorrow, guys, but tonight, I am... dead. Nothing else out there is, but the Slayer is dead.”

Giles rested his chin on his hand and thought. “I’ll, I’ll drive you and Willow home, Buffy. Xander, you’ll have to come too, I think. Buffy, this is serious, and I think it’s significant. Don’t come here tomorrow. Search for, for whatever... Vampires, anything. Start earlier, and, and try to be unpredictable in where you go. They must _be_ there, but they’re avoiding you. Try Willy again. Willow... if Buffy isn’t coming here, I don’t think you should come alone; I could collect you...”

She shook her head. “I’ll stay home with the computer. There’s nothing I can do here that I can’t do there. But Buffy’s right, Giles. Sunnydale’s dead, and not in the usual way.”

“ _‘Dead as heaven on a Saturday night.’_ ”

“Uh... what?”

“What? Oh... sorry, Buffy. Cultural icons again. Never mind. May I have my keys, Willow? And I’ll, I’ll drive you home.”

Xander sat in the front beside him; normally Giles would have glared at him and muttered about being a gentleman until Xander gave up the seat to one of the girls, but he observed the way Xander’s knee jumped, and said nothing. They stopped twice for red lights; both times he took the opportunity to lay his hand on Xander’s leg, and for a moment the movement stilled, but it started again almost at once, and for once, Giles didn’t pause to repeat his instructions; he simply let the girls out of the car, watched them safely inside, and put the car back in gear.

“Xander?”

“Drive _fast_ , Giles.”

“How long?”

“Ideally? Now. Thought I had longer... _drive fast_.” He was trembling noticeably. Giles braced his elbow inside the curve of the steering wheel as a pivot and gripped Xander’s thigh with the other hand; Xander’s own hands closed weakly on his wrist. “ _Hurry._ ”

He jumped the lights at Shott Street, ignored the speed restrictions and took the corner a good deal faster than he would normally have thought safe, especially considering that he was steering with one hand and hanging onto Xander with the other; Xander had begun to pant, with an unpleasant note in it, and the twitches in his leg were closer now to spasms.

“Gi... Gi...”

“Hang on, Xander.”

He spun the wheel, and the car slid sideways across the carriageway into a metal-framed gateway with the sign of a lorry park above it; a yank on the handbrake and a stamp on the clutch had it spinning, and a neat flick of Giles’ wrist nipped the car backwards between two very large articulated trucks. A light some distance away suggested the presence of a security man; there was no time to worry about him.

“Get in the back!”

Xander managed to get his door open but could do no more; Giles threw himself around the car, grabbed him by the shoulders and dragged him out, yanking the rear door open and throwing Xander inside, just as the first convulsion hit. He heard Xander’s head hit the window as he tore at his waistband, and gave thanks briefly for loose jeans and boxers which gave way under his grip. The second paroxysm drove Xander’s hips upward, and Giles rode the convulsion, wound his arm under Xander’s body and took a breath.

Then he slammed his head down, taking the swollen cock as deeply into his mouth as twenty-five years’ experience would allow. Xander bucked, whether from the sensation or the spell Giles couldn’t tell; all he could do was go with the motion and suck, hard – no fancy technique, no teasing and fluttering, no licking and light scraping of teeth. No subtlety. Xander made a peculiar sound, like a scream with no power behind it, and came, suddenly, in painful spasms which wracked his whole body and plainly had no pleasure in them.

Then he lay still, and Giles fell out of the car, and spat.

He dragged in a couple of uneven breaths before he turned back. “Xander?”

For a moment, he feared he had left it too late, and then he saw Xander’s chest rise in a great whoop for air, and his eyes open.

“Xander?” The head turned, and there was recognition in the eyes, but Xander was past speech. Giles slid back in beside him, and rested his head on the seat in front. “Christ.”

A hand patted his leg weakly. Giles looked out through the windscreen at the lights approaching. “God. That was close. That... _fuck!_ ”

The light was a torch in the hand of a man not a hundred yards away. “Don’t move! Stay where you are!” That was to Xander as he threw himself back out of the car and into the driver’s seat, fumbling for the ignition key. No lights; with a bit of luck – although he wasn’t inclined at the moment to trust his luck with anything – the security guard would put the car down to kids looking for a make-out spot. The engine caught first time, thank God, and he whipped the car out of the gateway just as the man raised the torch.

They met no traffic on the way back to Giles’ flat; it was just as well, he thought, for he was past being certain even which side of the road he was supposed to be on. He took on trust Buffy’s pronouncement of the lack of vampires, strong-arming Xander out of the back seat and more or less carrying him to the door, slamming it behind them both and falling, with Xander, onto the couch.

“Hey, Giles?” It was hardly more than a whisper. “Gotta say, always thought it likely that my first blow job would be in a car, but never imagined it going like that.”

He leaned his head back on the couch. “Don’t take that as a shining example of the class. I don’t think I have ever done one so badly. Not ever.” Not funny, but all either of them could manage. God but he wanted a drink and he dared not, _dared_ not have one. “So now we know... that about ‘shaking the spirit in the cage of the flesh’? I think that’s what just happened to you.”

“Hurt like fuck.”

“It mentioned ‘agony of body’, didn’t it? Looks like it meant it. I think ‘shaking the spirit’ means fits. You were going into convulsions.”

“Feel like I’ve been beaten up.”

“Give me a minute and we’ll do something about it. Thank the Lord you’re young and healthy.”

“Don’t feel either.”

“Bet you don’t.”

They lay another ten minutes, and then Giles sat up, groaning. “Are you O.K. if... No. We won’t chance it. Can you get up if I help you?”

He could, but barely; he was white, and although he made no complaint, he was obviously in pain. Giles braced an arm around him and walked him slowly to the bathroom, lowering him onto the closed toilet and straightening his own aching back. “What hurts, and how?”

“Pretty much everything, and like I lost a fight. Aching muscles. I think some of it’s just that I’m so tired, Giles.”

He turned away to start the bath running. “Let’s try obvious things first. Hot water and painkillers... shit. I have no idea at all whether you shouldn’t have painkillers when you’ve had a fit.”

“Gimme. I don’t care. We can’t exactly phone the hospital and ask, can we? ‘The patient has been cursed using runes from extinct demons...’”

“They gave me these last time I was concussed; they should be safe enough. You can have two. As the responsible adult here I’m telling you that you should never take somebody else’s prescription drugs.”

“Yeah. Pass them over.”

He turned back to the bath, adding a hefty slosh of the herbal thing he used when his own joints ached particularly badly, which nowadays seemed to be all the time. The bubbles would help preserve Xander’s modesty a little too. When he looked back, Xander had managed to get his shoes off and was making a start on his shirt.

“Here, I’ll, I’ll do that.” He’d dreamed of undressing Xander, but somehow his imaginings hadn’t included Xander’s weight hard against him, Xander shaking with exhaustion, Xander biting back little whimpers of pain while he did it. It wasn’t erotic in any way. He manhandled Xander into the water, braced a hand behind his head to allow him to lie back, and more or less collapsed to the floor himself.

“Better?”

“Loads. Thanks.”

There was silence for a good five minutes before Xander said, “Giles? Really? Thank you. For all of it. The bj, the bath, the drug-sharing and perhaps we’ll not mention that one to anybody.”

“Perhaps we’ll not mention any of it to anybody.”

That got a weak laugh. “Yeah.”

Giles considered. “Although when you’re my age, you’ll probably be able to make a really good story about it.”

“I think we need to work on the happy ending.”

“Maybe... So much for ‘I won’t do anything without asking you’.”

“Huh? Oh... You can assume that if I’m dying, you’ve got permission to do whatever you think best.”

“I’d be happier about that if I had any confidence that what I think best actually _is_ best. I’d been thinking...”

“Yeah?”

It was back to the ‘couldn’t afford to be embarrassed’ thing again. “I was wondering... so far we’ve been working on ‘fast’. When the need came upon you, deal with it as fast and as, as impersonally as we could. Don’t give way to the spell at all. But I’d been wondering if that was wrong. I’d actually intended to talk to you about it when we came back in, only...”

“Only it jumped up and bit us in the ass, yeah. Talk now.”

_Cringe_. “I was wondering if, if, we took a bit more time over it, we might fool the spell into thinking that we, that we were...”

“Breeding?”

He laughed weakly. “Yes. If you like. Doing what it wants us to do. I wondered if it might make it back off a bit, give us a little longer between, between attacks. Only _now_ , I’m thinking that if we try that, it might think ‘well, at _last_ ’ and it might make it worse rather than better. Might... hell, I don’t know. I have not got a single bloody idea. Some sodding Watcher I am!”

“Cut yourself some slack, Giles. I’m not seeing anybody coping better than you, and what with Wesley and Miss Post and Quentin Travers...”

“If you make one comparison between me and them I’ll hold your head under the water until the bubbles stop rising.”

“All I’m saying is that any one of them might manage a Slayer but you’ve been managing two Slayers and a witch and occasionally a werewolf, and now and then Cordelia and a souled vampire on and off, and a dorky guy with a fuck-or-die curse on him, and so far nobody’s dead. Except Buffy once, and that doesn’t count. Well, and Angel but that goes without saying. And O.K., Faith isn’t... I should just quit while I’m ahead, right? Look, yeah, at the start of this, which isn’t thirty-six hours ago, fuck, it feels like a week, I was expecting you to fix it. I admit it. My first thought was ‘why does this stuff happen to me?’ and my second was ‘Giles will make it right’. I’m sorry for that, O.K.? It’s not all up to you. We behave as if it is, and it’s not. I’ve forgotten where I’m going with this.”

“I don’t think I ever knew.”

Xander looked at the ceiling and his lips moved as he cast back through the conversation. “Oh yeah. Do we pretend the sex thing isn’t happening or do we pretend we mean it. Well, the not happening isn’t going so well for us, so – what’s the next, um, next?”

Giles thought. “That tonight was so much damage limitation that I think it might be worth trying it again and doing it, doing it properly.”

“So that’s – Giles, I am just so wigged at some of these conversations.”

“You think I’m not?”

“Yeah. Well. If I understand you, you mean doing it slower and possibly not in the car and with me conscious and knowing what’s going on? So... well, that _is_... sorta... can we leave the decision until after that one?”

“I told you, you make the choices.”

“Well, that’s... that’s my decision. Not to make a decision yet. I just hope to God there’s not any more tonight because I know I’m young but I honestly don’t think I can. And you don’t know how shaming that is to admit.”

“I’m a man, of course I know. And I agree. Please God, no more tonight.  But, but, it did occur to me, I know you don’t want to, to... but we _have_ to do more each time, and as far as that goes, the spell will help you. You’ve been fighting it and that’s, that’s good. The longer we have in between, the better. But once you say ‘right, it’s now’, stop fighting. Give in. The spell will make it... will make it so that it isn’t...”

“Will make me like it, yeah. Rollercoaster stuff. I can fight it all the way to the top, but once we crest, I should just shut my eyes and let it happen.”

“Yes, that’s, that’s a good analogy. Shall we get you out of there?”

He was careful, helping Xander up, of where he put his hands, and he made a point of keeping his glance above Xander’s collarbones. Fortunately Xander seemed able to get himself dry and to knot the towel around his waist without assistance. Giles, though, saw another potential chasm open.

“Um, do you want...” and he nodded at the toilet. Their eyes met for a horrified moment, and then Xander said firmly, “Yes, but I can manage, thank you,” and Giles, filled with relief, fled, closing the door firmly behind him. He hovered outside until Xander appeared, smelling of toothpaste and looking exhausted again.

“Bed.” He saw, clearly, the moment at which Xander realised that he couldn’t sleep on the couch; he saw the movement of his throat as he swallowed, and thought about speaking, and decided against it. “Are you still in pain?”

“Not exactly. More like a dull ache. Just the feeling of having done too much, you know? Although I haven’t actually done anything.”

“I could, I could, I, sometimes when Buffy has done a particularly hard training session, I’ll, I, they taught me how to do a proper physiotherapy massage. If you think that would help?” He had manoeuvred Xander to the edge of the bed; Xander flopped back onto the pillows.

“It sounds like heaven. If you don’t mind?”  

Giles managed a grin. “Say that afterwards. Buffy usually tells me I’m a sadist when I do it, but I do think it might let you sleep, and you would probably appreciate it tomorrow. Oh, here.” He found a pair of shorts for Xander and looked away while Xander dragged them on. “Lie down flat, on, on your face.” He worked his shoes off, and climbed up to straddle Xander’s thighs. “Tell me if it hurts.”

It must have hurt. Every muscle was tight and it took him a solid fifteen minutes to work from the nape of Xander’s neck to his knees. By then, though, Xander was sighing and loose. “Turn over?” His chest was less of a problem; Giles gave it only enough attention to ensure that there was no intercostal damage.

“You do this for Buffy? Really?”

“Not often. She won’t, she won’t let me. And she gets to keep more clothes on. Straighten this leg for me. Really, she ought to let me do this once a week or so, but... well, she doesn’t like it. Some people don’t. I think it would be good for her after a fight, but there it is. I think, I think that will do. Can you sleep?”

“Are you...”

“If you can manage ten minutes, I’ll clean my teeth and...” He was rummaging for pyjamas as he spoke.

“Giles? I’m sorry about this, invading your privacy...”

“What do we say about ‘sorry’? We’re doing what we must. Get into bed, I won’t be long. I think I need a shower. Call if it’s, if it’s too much, if I’m gone too long. I won’t lock the door.”

He had to shower. He couldn’t leave Xander long enough for what he really needed, which was the absolute mother of all wanks. It would have to be a cold shower and some serious yelling between his conscience and his libido.

He was still shivering when he came to bed; he hoped Xander wouldn’t notice. The boy – the _man_ – was coping admirably with a simply hellish situation. He did _not_ need Giles’ baser instincts making it worse.

“Gi’?”

“I’m here. Go to sleep.”

“Gi’? Who rubs your back after a fight?”

He thought for a moment, but it still made no sense. “What?”

“You look after Buffy. An’ Willow. An’ Xan. Who’s looking after Giles?”

It was surprising how much that hurt. “Go to sleep, Xan.” The body squirmed closer.

“You’re cold. Shouldn’t be cold. Make it better.” Oh merciful heaven. “You look after me, I’ll look after you. Buffy’s stupid.” What in the name of God was that about? The boy worshipped Buffy; he would never say that she was stupid. “Should let you rub her back. I’ll rub yours.” There was a vague pat on his arm. “Got your back, Gi’.”

No doubt it meant something to Xander. It meant nothing to him, but it was vaguely comforting nonetheless.


	6. In Which Giles Surprises Xander, and Xander Surprises Giles

The requirement for Xander to keep close, thought Giles, was a complete bloody pain in the arse. Even in his sleep Xander was affected, and he chased Giles across the bed, trying to maintain contact. Several times, Giles smoothed a hand over his shoulder until the restless fidgeting abated, and then gave him a gentle shove to encourage him to move away; eventually he admitted defeat and allowed Xander to – there was really no other word for it – cuddle. He seemed to be able to sleep in any position (taking up a great deal more than his share of the bed) as long as Giles’ shoulder was under his head or Giles’ chest under his arm.

Giles, unfortunately, did not share this ability. He dozed, but every movement of Xander’s brought him awake again: awake and hard and wanting. It would have been impressive in a man his age, he thought blackly, if it hadn’t been so bloody uncomfortable. He started counting backward from a hundred in Hebrew. Followed it up with Middle Egyptian and Archaic Sumerian. Whispered as much as he could remember of the _Catalogue of Ships_.

Named the Phthorian runes from Kaleph to Môr, none of which he had known two days ago. Listed all the books in the collection donated to the Council by the estate of Horace Holly, including the Vincey documents, which Giles had been given to catalogue and restore, and which had been intended as a snub, telling him that he was fit only to work on information which had been familiar as fiction to the public for a century. He wondered, not for the first time, about the relationship between Holly and Vincey – and wondered what they would have made of his own relationship with Xander.

He slept, eventually, but not well, and Xander’s sudden awakening brought him up too. Xander sat up abruptly, looked round him in perplexed desperation – plainly he was _not_ a morning person – and pushed himself into Giles’ arms.

Under other circumstances it would have been a lovely way to start the day. As it was, he was still trying to get his head in gear, when Xander pulled back and said desperately, “Gotta pee, right now, be right back.”

A minute later the bathroom door banged. “And good morning to you too, Xander.”

He waited; Xander crashed back in. “Sorry. Was afraid if I didn’t go quick...”

“Can you wait a minute while I go too?”

“Yeah.”

“Half an hour while I make a pot of coffee and decide if I’m still alive?”

Xander considered. “Pee first, because that one’s only a maybe.”

“Not taking chances on a maybe, we saw last night where that got us. Coffee afterwards. I’ll just be a minute.”

Actually he was five; he paused to clean his teeth, noting from the capless toothpaste that Xander had done the same, and to take something for the headache which loitered around the back of his neck and his temples. Then he went back to bed. Xander was sitting up, looking nervous; he had every right to be nervous, thought Giles compassionately. His last sexual encounter had been both painful and frightening.

“You look... Oh God, that’s not going to help.”

Xander cocked his head enquiringly and Giles shook his own. “Sorry. I’m not quite with it yet. I was about to say, you looked as if you were afraid I was going to eat you. And then I thought, you probably are.”

It took Xander a beat to catch up. “Oh. Yeah.”

“But not yet. Are you stiff?”

“Well, duh, it’s a spell. And I’m nineteen and it’s first thing in the morning. What do you think?”

He snorted. “I’d ask, do you think of nothing but sex? But it’s a spell, and you’re nineteen and it’s first thing in the morning. So that, as you say yourself, would be a no. I actually meant, how are your muscles? Are you sore still?”

Xander blushed; Giles suddenly thought that he had seen the boy colour more in a day and a half than he ever had before and that he rather liked causing it to happen.

“Not sore. A little stiff, yeah, but I think it’ll wear off. Last night... you were good.” He looked at his hand on the sheet. “I... I meant what I said. About suddenly realising how ungrateful we are. You do everything and we just... we just take and take.”

“It’s my job,” he said gently. “I’m the Watcher. For all the Council says I’m not, I am. It’s not what I do, it’s what I am. They didn’t want to send me, they didn’t choose me. I was Called, the same way Buffy was, when Merrick died. They can stop paying me, but they can’t make me _not_ be the Watcher.”

“You’re not _my_ Watcher. Or Willow’s.”

It came quite naturally to stretch out beside him, to reach for him and encourage him to lie down too. “I think I am. As soon as you picked up the fight, as soon as you declared yourself for it... I didn’t handle that well, Xander. I ought to have stopped you. I can’t offhand think how, mind. Sometimes when I think of you and Willow – and Oz and Cordelia too – fighting, it... well, it wigs me completely. The loss of my adult vocabulary wigs me too, possibly more. The whole set-up is horrible; bloody _children_ fighting. Even the Slayer set-up... But it is what it is. I’ve got specific responsibilities to Buffy and I meet them to the best of my ability as a Watcher. I’ve been trained to it. You’ve come to it with no calling, and only as much training as you’ve picked up as we went along, and yet you turn out every time Buffy or I whistle for you. Xander, have I ever told you how much I admire you for that?”

If he had wanted to make Xander blush, he had succeeded admirably. “So as far as it goes, I’m your Watcher too. If you want me to be. When you call me, when you need me, I’ll come. Not for Buffy’s sake, Xander. For your own.” It was important that Xander should understand that.

“I do. I do want that. But...” only Xander seemed to run out of whatever he wanted to say. Giles reached again, gathered Xander into the crook of his arm and waited. The physical contact seemed to make the difference. “But how can you want to? When... Giles, what do I do that’s important? I crash from one screw up to another and all I do is fetch doughnuts.”

“And do mouth to mouth on my Slayer. And come up with a plan to destroy The Judge. And steal a rocket launcher. I didn’t think of any of that. Who came for me when, when Angelus... Who stayed with me at the hospital? Who searched for Buffy with me?”

“Who got hit with a fuck-or-die spell which ties the Watcher up when he ought to be Watching?”

“Well, who ate the bloody band candy and made a complete arse of himself in public? So you roll from one crisis to another, Xander; welcome to _my_ world. Do you know what Imposter Syndrome is? It’s the fear that people are going to notice that you don’t know what you’re doing, that you’ve got your job by accident, that they’ve made Ripper into a Watcher and it’ll all go to hell in a handcart any minute now.” He shook his head at Xander. “I won’t tell if you don’t. But I don’t believe that the fuck-or... merciful heaven, what is _happening_ to my vocabulary? That the connubial compulsion is your fault. Somebody is striking against me, or against Buffy, and using you as a weapon. And it _isn’t your fault_. Don’t feel guilty, Xander. You should be angry, not guilty. You _were_ angry, the other night.”

“Yeah, but... it’s easy to be angry when it’s just me. But it’s not. It’s you too. And look, I hate to say it but we’ve been talking and...”

Oh God, it could be so _easy_. Xander was hard, he’d been hard since he woke up. All he needed to do was trail his fingers over bare skin and the boy would shudder, he knew it. All he needed to do was trace his tongue on the delicate places, to find the spots which would make Xander squirm and mewl. It could be so _easy_ ; the boy was driven by his hormones even without the spell. God, how he wanted it. How he wanted to seduce him, to take whatever the spell offered him, to make Xander want it too. Except, Xander didn’t want it, other than with his hormones. Because of the spell. Xander deserved better than that. But it had to be done anyway and it would surely be better for Xander if Giles could make him want it.

Only that was despicable. To take what he wanted because he wanted it and to tell himself that it was for Xander’s own good.

“Giles... Giles?”

  _Get real, Giles. He wants it because of the spell. He_ doesn’t _want you, except because of the spell. Make it easy for_ him _. He deserves that._

“Yes. I know. Top of the rollercoaster, Xander. Just let it happen. Shall we try... what we talked about? Is that all right?”

A wide-eyed, rather nervous, nod. “And... a little slower? Or do you want me to, to make it as quick as I can?”

A grin, still nervous but definitely a grin. “Giles, I’m _nineteen_ and nobody has ever blown me before. I honestly don’t think it’s going to make a lot of difference.”

It caught him out; he laughed aloud. “Is that a _challenge_ , Xander Harris?”

“You said you could do it better than you did last night.” It was suspiciously like a challenge. It couldn’t be – it was Xander whistling against the dark, all high heart and pretending he didn’t mind. If he needed to save face that way, Giles could pretend with him. He leaned past Xander and arranged the pillows.

“Lie down so you’re just propped a little. Close your eyes. Let it happen. Just go with it.” He worked the shorts down and Xander lifted obligingly to let him pull them off. Less than forty-eight hours from denial to allowing Giles to undress him.

He took a moment just to look: Xander laid out before him like a gift. _Not for you, Giles. But just this once..._ He traced a fingertip up the inside of Xander’s thigh and Xander twitched; Giles leaned close and breathed softly on the tender skin and Xander jumped; he smelled of fresh soap and Giles was touched; Xander, he thought, would make a considerate lover _for somebody else_. He dragged the flat of his tongue slowly from base to tip of the waiting cock and Xander squalled and snapped his hips up.

Giles laughed, and trapped the sharp hipbones under his hands. “Again?”

“Hnnh?”

This time he teased with little flicks which had Xander chasing the contact, and then simply opened wide and took Xander in deeply.

“God!”

“Yes, but you can call me Giles.” The joke was so old that he’d seen variations on it in cuneiform, but it had to be made during a blow job, it was the Law. A hand flicked lightly at his head and then the fingers twined gently through his hair.

He set to work. It was supremely rewarding: Xander seemed to like everything _it’s the spell it’s the spell don’t get smug it’s the spell_ whether wet and open-mouthed kisses on his balls or long licks to his shaft, whether tiny threats of teeth or strong deep sucks. He liked it and he said so, in incoherent verb-less sentences composed mostly of ‘yes’ and ‘please’, which kept ending in Giles’ name, and which tightened Giles’ own balls almost past bearing. Every change of technique brought his hips up into Giles’ hands until his whimpered encouragement began to carry an edge of desperation, to the point at which Giles would have had mercy on him and let him come.

Only...

“I can’t...”

It was almost a sob and it was not to be borne. Giles drew back, and reached for the drawer in the bedside table. The little canister inside came easily to his hand; he braced it against the side of the drawer and pushed. Xander curled upwards awkwardly to look; Giles showed him his fingers slick with gel.

“Let me?” He needed permission. _Needed_ it.

Xander lay back – but there was a nod, and he allowed his thighs to fall open.

“I won’t hurt you. I won’t do more than we need. Relax, don’t fight me.” He was teasing a finger forward as he spoke, making tiny slick circles as he approached; he rested his other hand on Xander’s stomach, feeling the muscles tense. “Take a deep breath and let it out slowly. Relax.” He let his voice go soft and hypnotic. “It’ll be all right, Xander, I’ll make it good for you, I promise.” His finger met the tight ring of muscle; he tickled lightly, not attempting entry, and Xander jumped. More slow circles and suddenly Xander did relax, his head dropping back and a faint whine coming from his throat.

“That’s it,” encouraged Giles. “That’s the way. You’re doing beautifully. Just let it happen.” He rubbed again, slowly, and dipped his head to Xander’s flagging erection, which responded easily enough. A little work there should distract Xander, did distract Xander enough to let the fingertip sneak entry. After that it was just a matter of keeping the movements slow and gentle, a little deeper every time, until...

“Oh!”

And a second touch just there, and one hard suck, and “I can’t” became irrelevant, Xander thrusting up into Giles’ mouth and clamping tightly on the invading finger. Giles swallowed twice – that got another wail from Xander – and waited for the arched spine to relax before he attempted to retrieve his hand. Xander simply lay and panted; Giles reached past him to the drawer and...

“Baby wipes?” Xander managed to get his eyes open just as Giles finished tidying them both up.

“Brilliant invention. Wasted on babies.”

“Mm.” Xander heaved himself onto his side, and threw an arm over Giles. “God. The spell’s not named right. I think it’s fuck- _and_ -die. I’ll go happy.”

“I’m relieved to hear it,” agreed Giles. The sight of the wreck that was Xander Harris wasn’t enough to make up for his own aching balls, but it was gratifying nonetheless. They lay in silence for five minutes before Xander shifted, pulling himself higher on the pillows and opening his eyes.

“O.K. Maybe I’m not going to die quite yet. I...”

And his eye fell on Giles’ pyjama-clad groin, and the obvious damp patch clinging to an equally obvious erection.

“Can I...?” He reached out, one hand brushing the damp fabric and Giles yelped.

“No!”

He had his hands trapping Xander’s wrists to the bed before the word was out of his mouth; Xander froze.

“I’m sorry. I thought you would... I’m sorry. It’s... I was forgetting.”

Forgetting what? But Xander’s head was lowered, he was hiding behind his fringe again and his hurt was unmistakeable. Intolerable. Incomprehensible.

“Xander... I’m saying you mustn’t. I’m not saying I don’t want you to. I, I wouldn’t lie to you that way, not now. Not any more. Of course I bloody want you to, I’m not made of stone, anybody would want you. But...” _oh God, I can’t have you, not like that, because once this is over you’ll be horrified if I’ve let you do any more than the bare minimum._ “For one thing, I think if you do we might set up a, a feedback loop, and that will be the end of any holding off the spell, it will just roll over us. And for another, even if that doesn’t happen, I, I, I... Xander, you must realise, we’re running out of options. It’s pushing us on much faster than I’d hoped. I’d been thinking that we might get two or three goes at each, at each escalation. I knew it would want more each time, but the steps are a lot bigger than I was hoping.”

“You mean it’s next time.”

“I – yes.”

Xander nodded.

“And well, the gaps in between, there doesn’t seem to be anything to tell us how long they’ll be. Three times yesterday and shortening intervals. I don’t know when next time is. And, and you may be nineteen, but I’m not. If you... if we... Oh, _bloody_ buggering hell! Look, you could probably get off again now. Certainly within the hour. I can’t do that. We can’t take the risk of the spell losing patience and saying ‘now!’ and me not being able...”

“It’s next time.”

“Yes.”

“Well... well, we always knew it was a possibility.”

They lay in silence for a moment.

“I knew it was more than that. I – haven’t been entirely honest with you.”

Xander’s head turned to him; Giles continued to look at the ceiling.

“I told you, I know a bit about connubial compulsion spells, although not a lot about the Phthormenes. I’ve never heard of anybody breaking one. Not successfully. I knew, I knew the night before last that we would end up here. I’ve, I’ve been lying about it.”

He waited for Xander to explode. Waited, and it didn’t happen.

“But... why?”

It sounded like pure bewilderment.

“Because... I didn’t think you were ready to hear it. That first evening? If I’d told you there was no hope and we might as well go straight to the end? ‘Buffy, see yourself and Willow out. Xander, get your kit off, we’re going to screw.’ I didn’t think you would cope with it. Only... well, obviously, I was wrong. You’ve coped incredibly well. I never thought it was the right time to tell you, which is patronising crap on my part and... oh dear God. I am _such_ a dick. I’ve been promising you choices and priding myself on giving them to you, and all the time the biggest choice of all I’ve been holding back. I never... I was thinking we were going to have to do it, come hell or high water, and trying to lead you to the edge gently so that you wouldn’t be too scared, so that you could see that it didn’t have to be totally terrifying. It never occurred to me that you had quite enough courage for that without my help, that if you _knew_ that there wasn’t really any chance of avoiding it, you might prefer just to shut your eyes and jump, to get it over with. We could have been done with this a day and a half ago except for bloody Giles thinking he knew best as usual.”

“You said ‘not successfully’. What counts as unsuccessfully?”

Xander regularly picked up bits of conversations which weren’t the important ones.

“The death of one or both of the participants.”

“Death of Xander, and/or Giles. Yeah, I can see that as unsuccessful.”

Or maybe they were the important ones.

“Giles... Rupert. What’s your middle name?”

There was _so much_ of Xander’s conversation which was like stepping in the dark on the stair that wasn’t there.

“Edmund.”

“Old fashioned but better than Rupert, which is a damn silly name.”

“Says the man whose middle name sounds like a bathroom cleaner.”

“Yeah, it does. Why Rupert? Is it a family name?”

“Yes. Eldest son gets it somewhere, unfortunately. My father is Edmund Rupert. Christopher is Christopher Rupert, but he tells his friends it’s Robert. I don’t blame him. I had a brief period of asking people to call me Edmund, but it wasn’t a success, I tended to look over my shoulder for my father. Is this going somewhere or shall I tell you about my school friend who was damned with Aubrey Valentine as first names?”

“I dunno, really, I don’t think of you as Rupert, but I was wondering if maybe you always feel you have to make like the grown up because we call you Giles. Echoes of Mr Giles the librarian.”

That was a surprisingly perceptive observation, even if not, he thought, correct. “I don’t think so. I was called Giles at school – we were all called by our surnames – and I just went on with it afterwards. Giles actually is a first name in England; I know one or two. I like it better than Rupert, certainly.”

“I’ll go on calling you Giles, then.”

“Thank you,” he said dryly.

“When I’m not calling you – what was it? Oh yeah – a total pillock. Have I got that right?”

“Your accent needs work, but yes.”

“Well, the phrase in _my_ accent goes ‘ego, much?’”

He winced. “I know. I _know_. Giles knows best and Xander can’t be trusted to make a rational decision. I _know_.”

“No, you dick! I mean, Giles has to get it right every time, Giles isn’t allowed to make a mistake, Giles gets put on the spot with the Scoobies panicking around him and has to decide on the fly what we’re going to do and if the decision isn’t right, everybody’s going to blame Giles for it. Wake up, big guy. You’re not perfect. Actually, we _have_ noticed. Some of your decisions? Iffy. Most of them, great, but occasionally? And you know what? It’s not a blame thing. You do your best and sometimes your best is good enough and sometimes it’s not, same as everybody else. Giles, I’m here too. I know I’ve let you lead. Hell, I’ve done more than that; I’ve hung onto you whimpering and _made_ you lead. Night before last, yeah, if you’d said that about ‘no hope, let’s fuck’, they’d have been able to hear me wig from Texas. But I _have_ thought about would it be better to cut my losses and, and... I didn’t know what you said about the likelihood of finding a get out of jail free card, but it did occur to me that I could say ‘no, I can’t stand the strain, just do it’. Don’t beat yourself up over it. You don’t have to spell out all the choices for me. Some of them I could see for myself.”

They lay in silence for another minute. Then Giles said cautiously, “I think perhaps I’m being stupid... I think there may be another stage I, I hadn’t thought about.”

He felt, rather than saw, Xander turn to look at him.

“Yeah?”

“I, I, we’ve been assuming that when we reached the, the end, I had to, to, to...”

“In the name of God, Giles, use the words. It’s a fuck-or-die spell. You gotta fuck me.”

“I’m not sure I do. Well, possibly, we don’t know.”

“The alternative being?”

“You fuck me.”

There was a long, long silence and then Xander slowly squirmed round, pulled himself onto his knees, unselfconsciously naked _and beautiful_. “You think that would be enough?”

“It might be. Worth a try. Gains us another however long, even if it doesn’t break the spell.”

He could see Xander thinking, see the play of emotions on his face, even if he couldn’t identify some of them.

“I’ve never done that.”

“You’ve never done it the other way either. I can, as you suggested early on, talk you through it. Assuming you think you could, you could... I think the spell would carry you through.”

“Giles... gotta ask, although not like it’s any of my business. Have you, um, got laid since that with... with Angelus?”

“Yes, thank you.” A little chilly. Xander cocked his head.

“O.K., maybe the wrong question. With a man?”

Oh, the boy _was_ more perceptive than he had been thinking. “Yes. One of the places I went to look for Buffy, I stayed in a rather, a rather sleazy hotel. And there was a man... You needn’t, you needn’t worry. The Council pays for a very comprehensive medical for me twice a year, including blood tests, and I’m, I’m careful.” And that was misdirection. Accurate, truthful, but aimed at sending Xander off on...

“Yeah. Hadn’t thought about that, but good to know. Giles, I’m sorry, O.K.,  and there is almost certainly a politer way to ask this, but... what I really mean is, have you taken it up the ass since Angelus?”

 _Note to self, Giles: stop under-estimating Xander._ “No.”

Xander slid down flat again, lying on his stomach, chin on his hands, gazing at Giles. “Giles, _I_ _don’t know what I’m doing._ You can’t seriously think it would be a good idea to let me...”

“Why not?”

“Are you not listening? _I don’t know what I’m doing._ I would hurt you.”

“I don’t see why. I _have_ done it before, Xander. I’ve had a bad – all right, I won't lie to you, a _very_ bad experience. I’ve also had good ones. I have every confidence that if I said to you ‘that hurts’ you would stop doing it.”

“Even with the spell in full-on fuck mode? You’ve seen what it does when it doesn’t get its own way.”

He had to swallow. He _had_ seen that, and he couldn’t deny a curl of fear, but he kept it out of his voice. “I think we would be all right.”

Xander’s head went down, but not before Giles had seen... tears? Surely not?

“It’s my choice?”

“It’s your choice.”

“Then my choice is no. We stick with Plan A. It’s next time, no more messing around, and you’re going to fuck me. What should I... is there anything I should do?”

“I’m trying not to tell you what to do, but... you would not be well advised to hold out so long. I know we said the longer the better but this time it isn’t. If we have to rush it, I’ll, I’ll hurt you. I promise I’ll make it quick, as quick and easy as I can, but if it’s too quick...”

“O.K. So maybe the last slope on the rollercoaster rather than the very top.”

“Yes.”

“Anything else?”

“Trust me.” _Forgive me._

“Giles? I do.”

 


	7. In Which Xander Picks his Words Badly and Giles is Careful

They researched. Giles refused to acknowledge that it was a waste of time. They had, he thought, one day and not necessarily all of that; he had enough to feel guilty about as it was, and he wasn’t going to add the burden of knowing that he hadn’t done his very best.

Xander made him stop for lunch. “I’m hungry. If you’re not hungry you ought to be. And... um... we don’t know what our timescale is so we don’t know when we’ll get to eat again. You can eat at your books if you like but you gotta eat.”

It was undeniable sense, and when he saw Xander close his book and push it safely to one side before he set down his plate and his soda can, Giles thought it only fair to do the same, although he refrained from comment. Afterwards, Xander disappeared into the kitchen and Giles heard him clattering dishes in the sink; he was startled five minutes later to be brought a perfectly drinkable cup of tea. “I’ve watched you do it often enough,” said Xander simply, and sat down on the floor, leaning on Giles’ legs.

Twice in the course of the afternoon, Giles found his fingers in Xander’s hair. The second time, Xander had his head tipped back and his eyes shut, catlike. He seemed to know when Giles was looking at him because he spoke.

“Need to ask you something.”

“Go on.”

“Need to tell you what I want. Only, I want you to promise me something first.”

“You know that whatever you want, I’ll give you, if it lies within my power.”

“That’s why I need the promise first. I’ll tell you what I want, but what I _really_ want is for you to be honest about it. If you don’t want it, I don’t want it either. I don’t want you agreeing just because I’m asking.”

Giles sorted that out in his head. “I promise.”

“Whoever did this spell, I think it’s fair to assume they didn’t mean to do us any favours.”

“Agreed.”

“So it wouldn’t be hard to work out that we’d have to fuck. And they knew me, Giles, they knew who I was, and they knew you too. This is personal.”

“I promised you that we would find out who did it, and hurt them, and we will.”

“I’m looking forward to it. But look, Giles, if they know us, it’s probably not hard to work out that we’re on a sort of damage limitation exercise. Like you said this morning, you’d make it quick and easy. I think... I think anybody who knows you at all would know that you would do that.” His voice had slowed, as if he were picking his thoughts out one by one and inspecting them before he articulated them. “I don’t want that, Giles. They’ve put a damn fuck-or-die spell on me and I can’t stop it. You stopped us having to play by their rules, but we’re at the end now, and it really is fuck-or-die. And I don’t want to. You’ve kept telling me about choices and I want to make a big one. I don’t want to do what they want. I don’t want to fuck.”

Giles’ mind emptied of everything except fear. He couldn’t speak, couldn’t think, couldn’t hear anything except the blood rushing in his own head. He wasn’t sure how long that lasted; when it eased, Xander was still leaning against his knee, eyes shut.

“What do you want me to do?” The voice didn’t sound like his own. _Oh please, oh please no pleasenopleaseno you promised him youpromisedpromised his choices he said you got a choice here too but you promised him whatever he wanted..._

“I want you – no. I want _us_ to make love. Not fuck. I don’t want quick and easy because they think that’s the best we can have and I want to beat them and have something better... Giles?”

He was shaking so hard the book on his lap slid away to the floor and he didn’t even attempt to catch it.

“Giles! What... what is it?” Xander was twisted at his feet, leaning on his legs, warm and solid and indisputably alive, touching him and patting him as if he were a skittish horse, his face screwed up in concern.

“I thought...”

“What?”

“I thought you were going to ask me to kill you.”

_“What!”_

He grabbed Xander, pulled him up from the floor into his lap, and buried his face in the boy’s neck. “You said... you said it was fuck-or-die and you didn’t want to fuck. I thought you meant to ask me to kill you.”

Xander’s arms wrapped round him. “God. No. No! Oh Giles...” and his voice broke on it. Giles pulled him closer still, and told himself fiercely that he wasn’t crying. They clung until eventually Xander eased away, frowning. When he got up, Giles took the chance to drag his sleeve across his eyes, and blow his nose; a moment later a tumbler appeared in front of him and Xander said rather unsteadily, “I think you probably need this.”

It was definitely the most sensible thing either one of them had said in three days; Giles took a large mouthful of neat Scotch and felt the burn of it down into his chest and stomach; when he looked up again, Xander was holding out his chocolate. “I don’t know if you’re saving this for special, but shock, sugar, comfort food, I know about these things.”

He laughed, rather shakily and took the packet. “Just this once, I’ll give you some. Heaven preserve me if you develop a taste for it.”

They shared three rows; Giles said abruptly, “Yes.”

“Yes?”

“What you asked. Yes. I think you’re right: whoever did this wanted you afraid and possibly hurt and would settle for nervous and distressed and uncomfortable. We can use that. We know the spell will make you willing and we know that if you give in to it, you can enjoy it, so we can thwart them. It’s only a tiny victory but we’ll have it.”

“Yeah. And then we find them and kick ass?”

“Ass will be kicked.”

“When you kick it, is it arse?”

“Not quite the same. A kick up the arse is for when somebody’s being stupid or lazy. Have some more chocolate.”

“Will you kick my arse if I call it candy?”

“Yes. Candy is boiled sweets. Suckers.”

“What about marshmallows?”

“They’re an abomination.”

“Even in cocoa?”

“Chocolate flake’s better but I haven’t seen that here... I’ll get my mum to send some. I think you would like them.” He had a sudden flash of Xander on a window sill eating chocolate with a gecko watching him, of Xander in an overflowing bath with chocolate on his lips... He shook himself. Xander and chocolate was, he well knew from the library days, a lethal combination; Xander and melted chocolate, dripped on his skin and licked off... oh dear Lord, he had to stop thinking that way.

“Now that we’ve established that you aren’t going to die – and that I’m not going to have a heart attack, which frankly was the more likely option – I think we should phone for take-away.”

“Take-out! Yay! And did you see the instant translation?”

“In Scotland, they call it ‘carry-out’. What do you fancy?”

Pizza. Of course. He let Xander call for it, while he picked up the books and cleared some space. He wasn’t stopping the research but... Xander was beginning to fidget, wanting to be close. It would be soon. He would just...

He excused himself to the bathroom, and shaved, cursing himself for an old fool and countering that he was doing it for Xander’s sake, that Xander deserved for him to make an effort, that Xander had said he always smelled good _when had he noticed?_ so obviously Xander liked his aftershave.

He affected unawareness when a few minutes later, Xander took himself off and did the same thing.

They ate. Xander had stopped even pretending to research; Giles was now working a second time through books he had already scoured once. There was nothing here.

It was dark outside.

“Giles?”

He looked up.

“I think I’m gonna grab a shower.”

He nodded, mute.

“Come with?”

He got up, went deliberately to lock and bar the door, and switched off the main light, leaving only the desk lamp to guide him to Xander.

“I think I’d like that.”

The bathroom light was bleak and unforgiving but nothing could be done about it; it showed him Xander nervously determined but skittish. It showed him what he had to do. He drew Xander close and simply held him for a minute, one hand running down his back, over and over, until Xander relaxed.

“All right now?”

“Yeah, I’m good.”

“Going to be better.” It was a promise. “I’m going to make you feel good. Trust me, and I’ll make you fly.” He started on the top button of Xander’s shirt and worked his way down, not hurrying, just opening the shirt and letting his hands slide over the chest beneath, down and up, thumbs skating lightly over nipples which tightened at his touch. He returned to them, circling, flicking and pinching gently. “Like that?”

He got a grin, and grinned back; the shirt was pushed back and he let his mouth fall to Xander’s neck and shoulder, searching for the sensitive places, nipping and then soothing, easing the shirt off, hands wide on Xander’s back. _Make him feel safe._ He let go and reached for his own buttons, but Xander shook his head.

“I wanna do that.”

He opened his arms in mute invitation, smiling; Xander fumbled the first button, managed the rest more easily, biting his tongue in concentration, pulling the shirt free and dropping it behind him, eyeing Giles up and down. _Don’t suck your stomach in, you vain old fool, he saw your chest this morning, he’s seen it dozens of times, he already knows you’re not twenty any more._ _He’s seen your scars, he’s bandaged half of them._ But he had never _looked_ , never looked as if he actually wanted to know. He had never tried his hands down Giles’ ribs, letting his fingers settle between them, and vanity or not, Giles was suddenly glad that he had kept himself in shape. It might be no better than _O.K. for an old guy_ , it might not be hard and tight like a teenager but... and fingers on his nipples made him shiver.

He smoothed a hand down Xander's side. Nothing hasty. If there was anything to be counted as a benefit in this entire catastrophe, perhaps it _was_ that he was older than Xander, that he was old enough to have gained a little self-control, that he knew the value of patience. _Slow burn, Xander, and then I’ll let you blaze._

Fingers gently around Xander's waist, skipping down to touch his thighs, wrapping back around his arse, just holding, not demanding anything. Patience. Which nearly deserted him when Xander bent his knees, dipped his head, and ran his tongue over a nipple. He looked down, to see one wary brown eye looking back up at him. Well. Xander empowering himself. Xander as a joint participant.

“Now bite,” he encouraged, and Xander squinted at him, startled, and nipped. “I like that. Do you?”

Apparently, yes; Giles, who knew what his own knees wouldn’t stand, backed up to sit on the closed toilet and encouraged Xander to straddle him, putting his chest just at the level of Giles’ mouth, and his waistband just where Giles’ hands naturally came. Giles didn’t try to disguise the fact that he was unfastening the jeans, but having done it, he held back from trespassing further, let his hands climb back to Xander's shoulder-blades. He wasn’t sure how far the spell had taken Xander this time, and running on too fast would be a sure way to scare the pleasure out of him.

Not too fast, apparently: there were fingers in his belt, tugging him back to his feet and working the leather free. “Wait.”

Xander froze. “Useful tip here. Shoes and socks _must_ come before trousers. Two reasons – one, you can’t get your jeans off over your shoes without falling on your arse and looking a complete prat, and two, no woman has ever, _ever_ been impressed by the sight of a man with a hard-on wearing just his socks.”

Xander giggled. “What about a man? Is he impressed?”

“Men tend to be more focused on the hard-on and less worried about the socks,” he confirmed, pulling his own socks off and waiting for Xander to do the same.

“Just as well I’ve got you to teach me this stuff. What else do I need to know?”

“I’ll mention anything that comes to me.” He turned aside to start the shower, and reached for Xander again, pushing the jeans off the narrow hips and letting them drop to the floor, encouraging Xander to step out of them. “Now, what were you doing when I so rudely interrupted?”

“Getting your pants off, I think.” He returned to the belt buckle, managing it and the zip, and working Giles’ trousers off with only one slight shy when his hand brushed the cotton covered erection within. His breath came a little fast and Giles drew him close again, setting both arms loosely round his waist. Xander rested his forehead against Giles’ shoulder. “Sorry. Just a little wigged suddenly.”

Giles drew little circles on Xander's back with the flat of his hand. “You’re doing fine. We’re not in any rush.” He waited, and sure enough, Xander gathered himself and set his hands to the elastic of Giles’ shorts.

“Can I?”

“I expect so.” He raised an eyebrow and waited for Xander to catch up. He’d said it often enough.

“Oh... you!” That came with a smack to the middle of his chest, and he laughed. “All right. _May_ I?”

“You may. May I?”

He got a nod, and pushed Xander's own shorts down to be kicked away, pulling him close at once. _Just stand. Don’t look, don’t do anything._ Xander trembled, and Giles tightened his grip. “Not new,” he murmured. “You did this before. You weren’t embarrassed this morning. No need to be now.”

“This morning... you weren’t naked too.”

“No,” he agreed, wilfully misunderstanding. “Now we’re equal.” He stepped under the water, drawing Xander with him. “Is that warm enough?”

“Nice.”

“Turn round and I’ll wash your back.”

He washed carefully from nape to waist. Xander was quivering again so he went no further, just easing his hands down Xander's spine again and again, taking care to keep his hips away. Backs were safe, backs could be touched by anybody but putting Giles behind Xander put Giles’ cock scarily close to Xander's arse, obviously. “Do mine?”

He folded his arms against the wall and rounded his back, making it plain that he enjoyed the touch. _See, Xander? Not scary. Just nice._ And he straightened slowly, turning into Xander's touch, hands on chest and stomach. _Nothing we haven’t done already._ Xander seemed happy with that, allowing him to do the same, palms gentle, long slow sweeps down to his waist.

And Xander's eyes followed his hands. Giles tipped his head forward to Xander's shoulder, both of them looking down.

“It’s a bloody stupid piece of design. I’ve thought so more than once, usually just after some demon has kicked me in the rocks. Mind you, it has its compensations.”

“You showed me some this morning.” A little quivery, but brave. And braver still, Xander's hand, reaching down to explore. “What’s it like, having a foreskin?”

He barked with laughter, and Xander grinned. “O.K., not one of my smarter questions, I guess; the only answer is ‘what’s it like not to?’

“Keep doing that,” said Giles breathlessly, “and I’ll tell you it’s bloody brilliant.”

He got a startled expression in response; surely Xander couldn’t have thought that Giles wouldn’t _want_ to be touched? But oh God, if Xander kept that up... and there was a bad joke there. He pulled away regretfully and slid to his knees as gracefully as he could manage, hoping that Xander hadn’t heard the click of joints. “I believe you liked this...”

It seemed Xander still liked it: in any event, he still gave those little whimpers which went straight to Giles’ cock, and his hands splayed on the tiles, his head back, water streaming over his face. Giles slipped a hand between his thighs, played a little, scraped with his nails, which got a yelp of encouragement, and slid the impertinent finger back. Xander tensed and Giles sucked hard, running his other hand back up Xander's thigh to his stomach and patting lightly. _Told you this morning, relax._ As if he had said it out loud, Xander did relax, and Giles rewarded him with a series of flicking licks and the gentlest of bites; Xander squawked. _Could spend a year just finding out all the noises he makes..._

He pulled away and stood up awkwardly. “Not bringing you off that way again,” he teased; Xander's eyes narrowed and suddenly he was on his knees in front of Giles.

“It’s all right, you don’t have to... I take it back, you do have to, you bloody have to, you _have_ to!” It was unsophisticated, a little rough; there was an almost uncomfortable drag of teeth once, and Giles was straight back among the runes, Ghidash, Sorvek, Al-min, Qur, Qurbin, Çy with the effort not to thrust into that welcoming mouth and wipe out any chance of breaking the spell any time in the immediate future. He guessed what was coming next and managed not to jump at the invasive finger. “Don’t push. Just a little steady pressure and wait. Yes. Yes. That’s it. God, that’s good.” Positive reinforcement would probably help too. “More. Bit more. Two fingers? Please? Oh yes. Oh _yes_.” He grabbed at Xander's hair and hauled him off. “Not both at once, it’s too much, I’ll be gone.”

Xander looked stunned; well he might, two fingers slipping from Giles’ arse and Giles saying he liked it. Giles laughed. “Out. Dry. Bed?” It was an effort to make that last into a query, to make it Xander's choice: his instinct was to yank and drag, to get Xander into bed _this instant_ , dryness optional.

It seemed to be acceptable; Xander looked no more than a little nervous. Giles turned off the water, stepped out, and turned back with a towel, in which he enveloped Xander, before dragging a second over his head and reaching for his comb.

“Giles, I’m not a girl, I won't care if you don’t have good hair.”

He looked back over his shoulder. “If I don’t comb it wet, it dries into ridiculous shaggy curls and...” but Xander was taking the comb from him.

“This I gotta see.”

He frowned quellingly – and gave way. He would deny Xander nothing, even if all it got him was ridicule. Xander came closer, and scrubbed at his chest. “Shaggy all over. I’m not going to bed until you’re dry.”

He held out his arms, eyebrow lifted in invitation, and Xander accepted it, rubbing him dry and taking his own turn in due course. His breath was coming a little fast again by the time Giles dropped the towel; nerves, Giles thought, and drew him into an embrace again. He could wait. He did wait until Xander sighed against him. “Sorry. I’m O.K. and then suddenly I’m not, suddenly I freak.”

“Sshh. I know, it’s fine. Trust me, I won’t go too fast.” He suddenly thought: the bathroom, even with Giles, was one thing; one expected to be naked in a bathroom. It wasn’t surprising to be naked in a bedroom. Walking from one to the other... he picked up the towel again, wrapped it around Xander and tucked in the corner, before doing the same for himself. Then he opened the door. “Will you come to bed, then?”

He held his breath, _almost_ expecting Xander to jib, relieved when Xander walked out past him.

He put on the bedside light; it would almost certainly be better for Xander than the main light, although Giles wanted to lay Xander out and look at every inch of him. Xander abandoned his towel unprompted and hopped up onto the bed, but his eyes were wary and his mouth tight.

“Here. Lie down for me? It will be all right, I promise, it will be all right, I won't hurt you, I’ll show you how good it can be.” It was nonsense, soothing words and phrases, and half of them spoken into the skin of Xander's shoulder. “I won’t go on until you’re ready. Nothing we haven’t done before. Nothing you don’t want, I promise.” Long slow caresses, gentle touches, and Xander beginning again to relax against him, becoming brave again, touching Giles back. They played: Giles would touch Xander and then back off, encouraging Xander to touch him the same way. He felt it when the spell began to be insistent: Xander would push into his caresses, making little throaty noises, and rocking his hips up when Giles touched his thighs. Giles teased on; he had told Xander to give way to the spell, and he wasn’t above using it himself. It would drive Xander, suppressing his inhibitions; Giles was there to coax him the rest of the way.

The slick finger was accepted without difficulty; the second one tightened Xander's mouth for a moment but Giles waited, his other hand soothing and stroking, and Xander relaxed again. Giles leaned forward and traced his tongue up Xander's chest. “All right?”

He got a jerk of the chin that might have been a nod, and he twisted his wrist slowly; Xander cried out.

“More?”

“Yeah.”

“Deep breath. Let it out slowly. Feel good?”

“More. Now. Please, Giles.”

He let the fingers slide free and Xander let out a sound of dismay.

“Wait a moment for me.” The condom was its usual recalcitrant self, the foil slipping between his greased fingers and the condom itself the wrong way up when it fell out, but he managed and leaned over Xander.

“Turn over for me? It’ll be easiest that way.”

Xander rolled and Giles encouraged him to his knees, braced him with pillows and settled behind him.

“Be a bit uncomfortable, but not more than that. I’ll go slowly. Tell me if I’m hurting you.”

Another listing of the Phthorian runes, interspersed with slow licks up Xander's spine, and touches to his nipples to distract him.

“That’s it.” For a moment he was still, and then...

“More. More!” and Xander arched his back and squirmed.

Giles caught himself halfway through a snapping plunge, and thrust more slowly, more deeply. Every stroke elicited a sound from Xander, an increasingly desperate whine, developing into those half words and phrases which had driven Giles to distraction that morning. He shifted, trying to find the spot...

“Giles!”

And again, and again, just at that angle, one hand hard on Xander's hip (there would be bruises) and the other sliding across his skin to grasp the weeping cock and pull, two long slow strokes which he knew would...

And he followed.

His knees ached and he didn’t care; he was half holding Xander up by a hand across his belly, slick and sticky, and they tipped sideways together and lay still. He would never have this again and he grabbed fiercely at every second, to have it _now_. It was only when Xander made a sound of discomfort that he eased away, still whispering reassurances for the unfamiliar sensations, still petting and soothing. He couldn’t remember ever having been so tired, but he cleaned up Xander and then himself, and drew the covers over both of them.

“Giles?”

“Mm?”

“Spell’s broken.”

It took him a moment. “That’s good.”

“Giles?”

“Mm?”

“Is it different with men?”

For a second the only answer which came to him was ‘couldn’t you _tell_?’ but it didn’t seem helpful; he waited for further elucidation.

“I know with women, they’re not supposed to like it if you just go to sleep. Is it different with men? I don’t think I can even manage to turn over.”

He felt a bit that way himself. “I think you could be excused. Just this once.”

“Giles?”

“Mm?”

“Thank you. For all of it really.”

“Mm. Go to sleep, Xan.”

“No, I mean it. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

It was a bloody stupid thing to say, but nothing else came to him.


	8. In Which They Discover What We Have Been Suspecting Since Chapter One

For all his exhaustion, he didn’t sleep well; every time Xander shifted he half woke, started to reach over, to wrap an arm around the body next to his, to caress, to do _more_. To do more which wouldn’t now be welcome. The fifth time he woke, he eased himself out of the bed without rousing Xander, gathered clean clothes and went to make tea.

By the time he heard Xander moving about, he had re-shelved all the books, filed the notes they had all made and cleaned the kitchen; he felt dreadful, and the bathroom mirror had told him as he shaved that he looked worse. And his hair was a joke.

The banging on the door startled him until he recollected that he had locked it before... before; he opened it just as Xander pattered barefoot down the stairs _wearing oh God wearing Giles’ jeans and his old faded shirt from the_ Clash _concert_.

“Look what we found, Giles,” said Buffy, grimly. “I searched for hours last night and found nothing again. Willow and I wondered if it might be worth doing a pre-dawn run and the place was crawling. One of the pop-ups bolted for the storage units at the back of the mall, I chased it in and see what I fell over. I don’t know why we didn’t think of it before: trouble with a spell?”

“Ethan. Yes, we, we might have guessed, I suppose. Random cruelty. I imagine it _was_ you?”

“Ripper darling, who else would it have been?” He looked at Xander and smirked maliciously. “You held out a lot longer than I expected, I must say. And I was sadly disappointed to find that you’ve been working on your wards. I was looking forward to watching, but I couldn’t get any pictures at all, just the progress of the binding. Oh, except for the blast in the car park and that was so quick that it was hardly worth it. But I suppose that’s a teenager for you, isn’t it – no staying power.”

Giles’ eyes went to Xander and he opened his mouth to say something – but Xander forestalled him, taking two quick steps forward to where Buffy held Ethan, and without warning, landing one surprisingly powerful punch in his midriff. Ethan, with a breathless crow of pain and surprise, doubled as far as he could for Buffy’s unsympathetic grip, and straightened slowly, wheezing.

“Are you going to let him hit a defenceless man that way, Ripper?”

Giles shook his head slowly. “Xander, don’t hit Ethan like that. Bend your knees more and turn from the waist; that allows you to put your weight and your shoulder into the blow.”

“Like this?”

“Much better. Buffy, pick him up, please, and put him on the chair. Willow, I’m sorry, Ethan causes me to forget my manners: do sit down. Now, Ethan, start explaining.”

“What’s to explain? You’ve been drooling over that boy since God alone knows when; I just thought you deserved a little treat, so I got some of my... acquaintances to catch him for me, I marked him up for you and had them drop him off.” He looked innocently wounded. “They said you didn’t seem at all grateful.”

“You thought I would be grateful.”

“Come on, Ripper, tell the truth and shame the devil. You wanted him the first time you saw him.”

“Hardly. The first time I saw him, he was under-age and he was a pupil at the school in which I was employed. Think very carefully what precisely you’re accusing me of, Ethan.” The warning in his tone was clear.

“You weren’t so precious about the age of consent in your London days.”

“In my London days the one who was under-age was me, and I was older than Xander is now.”

“Nit-picking. Shall we just say that you’ve wanted him any time this past year? He was all paid up and street-legal and you couldn’t take your eyes off him.”

“He’s yanking your chain, Giles,” said Buffy in a bored tone, and Willow nodded.

“My dear Buffy – may I call you that? Or must it be Miss Summers? – I’m afraid that we all know that the reason a Slayer has to have a Watcher is that most Slayers aren’t observant enough to cross the road safely on their own. I assure you, Ripper has been lusting after your friend for some time. And you know, he’s not really happy in this Godforsaken part of the world, especially when you keep abandoning him to chase off after souled vampires and suchlike. If you cared at all for your Watcher, you would want him to be happy, and he isn’t, is he? Despised by the Council – I do believe he was fired, wasn’t he? And his job at the school seems to have gone phut too, and his Slayer doesn’t think she needs him any more... I just thought he could do with a treat.”

“The sexual slavery of another human being. You do have odd ideas of treats, Ethan.”

“You can’t tell me that you’ve forgotten the weekend in York. Sexual slavery was quite acceptable then.”

“That wasn’t at all the same thing.”

“Wasn’t it?”

“I distinctly recall giving you a choice.”

“I might have preferred it if you hadn’t.”

Giles sighed. “This isn’t going anywhere. What did you do it _for_ , Ethan? I simply don’t believe that you thought I would be pleased. You did it for a reason, and you’re going to tell me what it is.”

“Or what, Ripper? You’re going to need a threat – or a promise. Are you going to hurt me?”

He felt Ripper flash in his face. “Quite possibly, but not in any form you’ll enjoy. Or I might let Xander do it. I think you owe him something, if he feels like claiming it. Talk, and make it convincing. I’ve been locked up in pointless research since you did the bloody spell, instead of working with my Slayer and I want to know why. Buffy says the vampires were gone, so what have you been doing, and who paid for it, and why?”

“Always the Watcher now. You need to move on past that; not everything is about your precious Slayer. The vampires stayed away because I told them to; I didn’t want you distracted from your treat. You’ve always had such a gift for single minded concentration – I thought that a couple of days concentrating on him might loosen the shackles of your boring Watchership. Time was when you had _fun_ , Ripper. When you knew how to live a little. Don’t you remember racing from London to Ipswich?” He grinned at Willow. “You American children, so hung up on your cars. For real sex, you need a motorbike.”

Xander snorted. “You can’t make out on a motorbike.”

“Actually, you can,” said Giles mildly. “If you’re prepared to take some risks.” The three of them stared at him; he was polishing his spectacles again. “Well, not, as you would say yourselves, fourth base. But certainly second. One in front to steer, and the pillion passenger does all the work.” He smiled reminiscently, and maliciously. “Ethan was always rubbish at it. He leans the wrong way on corners, and he tends to clutch when he thinks you’re driving too fast, which isn’t comfortable when he’s got his hands inside your leathers and you’re trying to outrun the police car, and when he went in front he couldn’t concentrate enough to throttle up and steer at the same time. He nearly killed us both outside Colchester. Coming home, I made him go with Philip and they quarrelled all the way from Manningtree to Greenwich. Deidre was much better at it than Ethan. Hit him, Buffy.”

She did.

“ _What is this about,_ _Ethan?_ Breaking up the group? Make Xander hate me, and Buffy despise me? Humiliate Xander to the point he’ll stop turning out for Buffy?”

“Hardly. I don’t care about your little Slayer; I don’t care about your friends, although really, you need mates your own age. I’m sorry if you didn’t enjoy him, though. I’d have kept him myself if I’d realised you wouldn’t appreciate him, although I’d have had him on his back within the hour.”

Xander’s flinch at that was sufficient for Giles to backhand Ethan across the face. Ethan sat up slowly, trying his teeth with his tongue. “You’re a bully, Rupert. You always were.”

“You taught me everything I know,” said Giles, flatly. “You think forcing Xander into my bed isn’t bullying?”

“Oh, did you make it as far as the bed? I thought you might just have had him down here... Did the girls not know that? They did it, Buffy. The spell’s broken. Your Watcher boffed your best mate last night – and I’m good with spells, I’m better than Rupert, so little Xander will have been begging him for it.”

This time Buffy didn’t wait to be prompted to hit him. Xander, though, came closer, pulling the chair away from the desk, and straddling it, all the time watching Ethan with an odd expression. Ethan, his eye caught by the movement, gave him a rakish grin, spoiled only a little by the swelling of his lip where Giles’ ring had caught it.

“Comfortable sitting this morning? Rupert’s quite big, isn’t he? I hope he was careful.”

Both Buffy and Willow winced; Xander coloured, but his voice showed nothing. “He’s right, you’re a bully. But he’s wrong about your motives. This has nothing to do with Buffy, does it? And only indirectly anything to do with me. It’s all about you, you and him, and it’s not going to work.” He smiled gently at Ethan. “You’re not going to get him back.”

Ethan sneered. “What, you think he’s so horrified at what he’s done to you that he’ll throw me over and take to a wholly virtuous life? Don’t you believe it. He’s playing at being Rupert, but Ripper still breaks out when he doesn’t get his own way. The prim and proper Watcher wouldn’t have hit me, or told his Slayer to hit me. That’s Ripper all the way through and Rupert can’t be rid of him. You think you know him? You haven’t got a bloody clue. You don’t know the half of what he’s done, what he’s capable of doing, and if you did know, you’d run away screaming. I’m a bully? What do you think he is?”

Giles shifted and opened his mouth to speak; Xander shot him a look which he couldn’t quite read and turned back to Ethan. “The one who hasn’t got a bloody clue is you. You’re talking as if Giles hasn’t changed at all in twenty years. Yeah, maybe he wasn’t well smart when he was young. Maybe he wasn’t nice to know. Maybe he wasn’t safe. Now? Yeah, _you’re_ a bully. You wanted me scared and you wanted me hurt. I was scared all right. I was terrified. But Giles said ‘Trust me, it will be all right,’ so I did – and it was. All you can see is Ripper: I see Giles, and whatever else I was afraid of, I was never afraid that he would hurt me.”

Giles could see Willow nodding; he didn’t dare speak. Ethan’s mouth curled. “You must have enjoyed it more than I expected then. Still, Ripper was always good in bed. Did he persuade you? What’s that phrase you Americans use? ‘Inappropriate touching’? Did you find you liked it?”

Xander shifted a little. Giles suddenly thought that in three days, he had gained a year at least; unshaven and with his hair tangled, and dark circles still under his eyes, he looked unmistakeably adult. “See, you’re doing it again. Trying to make him feel bad; trying to make me feel bad. I know where to lay the blame for this: you did it. Not Giles. You don’t know him any more: you talk about him as if he was going to do just what you expected. Only he didn’t, did he? He didn’t do what you would have done.”

“Looked after you, did he?” It was contemptuous.

“Yeah,” said Xander, steadily, “he did. And not just the way you mean. You see somebody who doesn’t give a solitary damn about anybody else, don’t you? Only I see the man who has been protecting me, protecting my... my pride, usually at the cost of his own. I know why you did it, and I’m telling you: you won’t get him back.” 

Willow leaned forward. “Do you really know, Xander?” She sounded as if she thought she might know too.

“Course I do and so do you. We know about bullying and bullies, Will, don’t we? Do you remember Lara Seagrove and Gregory Wall?”

She nodded, with a satisfied expression. Xander looked round at Giles. “ _Were_ you a bully when you were young?”

“I – yes. I suppose so.”

“No ‘suppose’ about it, Ripper.” Ethan’s voice was smug, but Giles could see a slight glimpse of insecurity. Bullies, he thought suddenly, thrived on other people’s insecurities, and maybe he wasn’t as far past his bullying days as he would have liked to think. Ethan didn’t want Xander to talk. So Giles did.

“Go on, Xander. Do I know Lara Whoever and the other one?”

“No. Lara’s family moved to Washington years back, and Buff dusted Gregory at the Bronze in all that with the Master. Lara was top of our year when we were maybe eleven, twelve? And then at thirteen, she... you know how some girls are just kids one day and then the next day they’re _girls_? She did that. All the boys were after her: she was pretty and smart and good-natured as well, so the girls didn’t hate her. But the boys were crazy about her.

“There was always a group round her, people wanting to walk with her to class, to walk home with her, to go wherever we were going that year. And Lara was sweet: she’d go with whoever asked first. She didn’t want to date, so she’d walk home with one and meet somebody else to go and see a movie, and it was her girlfriends as often as it was one of the boys.

“Gregory Wall was crazy about her. Just crazy. He was the year above us, and he wanted to date, and Lara wouldn’t. She’d go out with him and a group, but she’d be likely to walk home with someone else.”

“I’m sure this is very touching,” put in Ethan waspishly, “but it’s deadly dull.”   

“The point you’re missing,” explained Willow, as to an idiot, “is that Gregory Wall was about the worst of the bullies. And the standard was high, wasn’t it, Xander?”

He nodded. “We got real good, Willow and me, at ducking and weaving. We knew who was safe enough on his own but mean as a snake in a group. We knew who could be bought off by Willow doing his homework, and who was gonna take my lunch money. We knew who would ignore us until Miss Cargill was sarcastic to them in class, and then they would have to find somebody else to put down to make themselves feel better. We could... I dunno, we could read the signs. We’d had enough practice.”

He exchanged a look and a nod with Willow, and turned back to Giles.

“Gregory Wall wanted Lara Seagrove and she said no. And I don’t think he had any experience of not getting what he wanted. His folks had money, and he had all the good stuff – TV in his room, video player, tickets to the game, whatever. So he had a go at giving her stuff. Candy to start with. She shared it with her friends. He asked her to go the movies and she said no and went with Lucy and Melody.

“Then one day he was talking to her, and I came by, and she smiled at me. And you know, Giles, girls didn’t smile at me, ’cept for Willow. And I smiled back, and wasn’t looking where I was going, and I walked into the wall, and Lara laughed.” He considered. “It must have looked pretty funny; she wasn’t unkind, she came up after me and asked if I’d hurt myself, and Gregory said something about ‘oh, Harris is the official class klutz,’ and when I turned away, he tapped my heel and I fell down the stairs.”

“That was the start of it,” confirmed Willow sadly. “After that he wouldn’t leave Xander alone. It was worse if Lara was there. He’d walk into Xander and make him drop his books, or he’d barge him out of the way so he fell, or stickers on his back, or gum in his hair or whatever. Trip him up in the cafeteria. Spray him with soda. All the same old stuff, but always making Xander look bad in front of Lara.”

And Xander, thought Giles, had still been clumsy enough for two at sixteen; he was one of those boys who didn’t quite grow into their frames until later, and who had seemed to be composed entirely of knees and elbows. At thirteen he would have had no physical defences at all.

“He never worked out that Lara didn’t like it, that Lara would walk home with me because I’d got a skinned elbow and a cut knee and she was sorry for me. He wanted to look good for her, he wanted to be the knight in armour and bring her the monster’s head, and he never realised that it just made her feel sorry for the monster. He couldn’t understand that when he stuffed my head down the toilet, Lara didn’t think he was funny or big, she thought he was an asshole. She wasn’t that interested in me, but after a while she really despised him.” He paused for breath.

“And that’s you, isn’t it? You’re still trying to impress Giles, and you’re still trying to do it the way that might have worked when he was twenty. He’s grown up and you haven’t. You’re still twenty in your head, and hello, he’s not impressed. And get this: neither am I. You’re a bully, and I’ve been bullied by bigger people than you. Yeah, I’m a loser, but I’m still only nineteen, I’ve got a chance to grow out of it. You’re a loser and you don’t even know it. Your spell? Just a bigger version of Gregory Wall sticking my head down the john, and that didn’t make Lara want to go out with him, and it won’t make Giles want to get back with you.”

Ethan looked sick; it was obvious to them all that Xander was right. Giles felt the world close in to a white point; he came to himself with Buffy prising his hands off Ethan’s throat, and Willow and Xander pulling on his arms and shouting at him. He shook with the intensity of his hatred for Ethan, which spilled over into an echo of his hatred for Angelus, for everyone who thought to use him by damaging the people he loved. He broke back to Ethan, lifting him by his shirtfront.

“You thought – you really thought that I would be pleased that you hurt Xander? That you made _me_ hurt Xander? That...” he gagged. “You made me into a _rapist_ and you thought I would _like_ it?”

Buffy was taking Ethan from him again; Willow and Xander were pulling him away, Willow crying now, and Xander talking, frantically, desperately, both of them hugging him, pulling him, trying to make him look at them, and he wouldn’t, he couldn’t, for pain, and rage, and shame all over again, for having become what he loathed.

He tore away from them, bolting to the bathroom, where he collapsed on his knees, losing the contents of his stomach in a rush and hanging, retching and weeping silently for several minutes.

It was very quiet outside. He managed to stand, to rinse his mouth and wash his face. He felt odd: hollow, empty. Tired.

Old.

Outside the door, Xander was leaning against the wall, waiting for him. Willow was sitting on the floor. He looked around. Buffy and Ethan were gone. He couldn’t bring himself to ask where they were: if he knew, he would go after them and kill Ethan.

He looked at Xander and mustered his courage. “Xander, I’m so...”

Xander raised his hand, his face set. “Don’t you dare say you’re sorry, Giles. Not to me.”

He looked down. He deserved that. His past, catching up with them and hurting Xander. He’d damaged Xander at Ethan’s prompting, and Xander had _thanked_ him. He didn’t deserve to be forgiven for it.

“We had a deal. I won’t have you apologising for something you didn’t do.”

He laughed in surprise; not much of a laugh, more a croak, and at least half way to a sob.

“And Giles? If you _ever_ use that word again, I’m going to hit you. Knees bent and from the waist and the rest of it. That isn’t what happened. You know it isn’t.”

“What would you call it, then?” he asked dully. “Sex without consent. Simple enough, I’d have thought.”

“Rescue?” asked Willow, from the floor. “Avoiding the ‘shaking of the spirit in the cage of the flesh’? Not letting Xander die?”

“Making the hard decisions so I didn’t have to? Giving me the choices” he didn’t look at Willow, but it could be seen that he was picking his words carefully “that some other people didn’t get? I said yes, Giles. You know I did. I said yes that first night when we talked and I never changed my mind.”

“Because you had to.”

Xander shrugged. “I had a choice. Not a good one, but I had one. Giles, it wasn’t Lara who broke an egg into my hair and then stuck my head in hot water so it would set. I knew at thirteen how to lay the blame. I still do.”

“Giles?” Willow had got up and slipped behind him into the bathroom; she was holding out a tumbler of water and a pill. He sometimes thought the children – the Scoobies; he hated the name but he couldn’t call them children, not after... Xander was not a child – the Scoobies knew more about the contents of his flat than he did himself. “I think you should go back to bed. You don’t look well.”

“Good thought, big guy. Sleep it off. All be better after a rest.”

“I don’t think, I don’t think I could...”

“Hence the pill,” scolded Willow. He’d had them after Angelus, but he’d rarely taken them; he had been too afraid then to make himself vulnerable by drugging himself to sleep. She offered it again; he watched his hand take it and reach for the glass, as if it belonged to somebody else.

“Bed,” she said simply, and between them they manoeuvred him there, Willow turning her back politely while Xander stripped him to his shorts and coaxed him under the covers. The room smelt of sex, he thought, but neither of them commented, nor did they speak when they lay down one on either side of him, each with an arm across him until he fell asleep.

He woke alone.


	9. In Which Giles Learns Xander's Secret

It was three days later when Xander came back, wearing Giles’ _Clash_ shirt again, pushing his way inside as soon as Giles opened the door, an automatic hand out to touch the cross and then straight on, already talking.

“Was he telling the truth? Because I need to know.”

Giles, caught between surprise, embarrassment, irritation and relief, considered and discarded several answers (‘Yes,’ ‘No,’ ‘Good evening, Xander, and how nice to see you too’) and somehow ended up with nothing, merely staring blankly as Xander wandered around the room, apparently unable to settle. The silence hummed and eventually Xander turned to face him.

“ _Was_ he telling the truth? Ethan? About... about you liking me?”

And oh Lord, the spectacles were coming off and Xander surely must be able to read that by now.

“He – Ethan – well, you wouldn’t take him as – I may have thought – certainly never while you were in school, and I know you weren’t – aren’t – so there’s really no, no need for you to be, to be concerned, I won’t mention...”

“God. Giles. Stop. Breathe. I know you’re all words-man, but look, Xander is the babble-king here. So I know that if you’re talking like that, it’s because you don’t want to answer the question. Not going to work. Not any more. Simple question, Giles, requiring a yes or no answer. Ethan said you like me _that_ way. Is it true?”

“Xander, it’s a matter of...” but Xander had his hand raised and a determined expression.

“Not an essay question, Giles. Multiple choice. Possible answers: A – Yes or B – No. Is. It. True?”

“Yes.”

Xander made another circuit of the room, picking things up and putting them down. Giles winced but actually Xander’s touch was delicate. “You never said.”

“What would have been the point?”

That got him a hard look, and Xander started to speak and then obviously caught back the words, dropping into a chair with a frustrated expression.

“O.K. Sit, Giles. I’m going to tell you a story. Sit! I want to tell you the story of Xander Harris and the school librarian.”

“Xander...”

“Nope. My turn to talk. Your turn to listen. Story starts a few years ago when our hero is hanging out in the school library where he overhears a most peculiar conversation between the new kid and the new school librarian. Now librarians have not previously been of great interest on account of libraries being full of books and librarians being so definitely not cool. But this librarian? Weird accent. Weirder habits. Clothes... let’s not go with the total uncoolness of the clothes. But... he kills vampires and he hits monsters with an axe. That _is_ cool.”

Giles shifted. “Is this going somewhere?” he asked snippily.

“Slow intro but wait until we get to the main plot.”

“I need tea,” said Giles desperately, fleeing for the kitchen; Xander followed him.

“O.K. Chapter One introduced the librarian. Chapter Two is about our hero, one Xander Harris. He’s... not anything much. He’s not smart. He’s not a jock. He’s not much good at the vampire slaying stuff. He sucks at research. He’s good for fetching doughnuts or pizza and he can whittle a reasonable stake.”

“Xander, you...”

“Don’t interrupt, please, we’re just getting to the good part, which is the hero and librarian together. So the librarian teaches Xander how to use a stake and a crossbow. And he lets Xander hang out in the library. And after a while, Xander notices other stuff. Like that if he says he’s struggling with a paper he has to write, helpful books appear, and while Xander’s grades are never going to be anything special, he’s stopped ending up in detention for not even attempting to hand in the work.

“Or that if Xander hangs a bit more at the library because things aren’t great at home, the librarian has a tendency to say things like, ‘I can’t be bothered cooking tonight, I’m going to pick up something on my way home. Fancy keeping me company?’ I got a lot of meals that way, and a lot of good advice disguised as just conversation. And a couple of times, I got a place to sleep, no questions asked.”

“I knew, I knew that things were sometimes awkward. “

“Awkward. Yeah, that covers it, I suppose. But awkward or not, I had somewhere to go. _Somebody_ to go to. Somebody who might be pissed at me because of something I’d said or done – or not done – but who would let me in anyway. And so did Buffy and Willow. I wasn’t the only one who noticed that you never let any of us walk home alone.”

“I was Buffy’s Watcher. It was my duty to look after her.”

“You weren’t mine, or Will’s. Not then.”

“No, but... well, it was obvious that, that you needed a mentor. A father-figure.”

“Let’s go with ‘mentor’. I can buy ‘mentor’. Rôle-model if you must. Not father-figure. O.K., moving on. We’ve seen the librarian tie himself in knots over Miss Calendar. We’ve seen him ask a chair out on a date.”

Giles winced. He would never, ever, be allowed to live that down.

“Only then we see Ethan Rayne, and the idea bursts on Xander: the librarian likes boys as well as girls. He plays for both teams.”

“Oh, good Lord.”

“Well, but Giles, the way he spoke to you? The way he looked at you? And you, you couldn’t decide whether to fight him or fuck him. I didn’t need gaydar to get that.” He considered. “At a guess, that’s when Willow will have spotted it too. Buffy wouldn’t have noticed unless you’d actually humped Ethan in the library. Well, she didn’t.”

“Thank God,” said Giles, profoundly. “But you never said anything.”

“See, it had already occurred to me that your reputation couldn’t stand the hit. I mean, Buffy and Willow and Faith in the library at all hours? All it needed was the suggestion that your intentions weren’t all shiny, and – what would have happened?”

“I, I would have been fired. Deported, probably. The Council would have sent Buffy a new Watcher.”

“And we know how well that went. So I already knew that I was your cover. A boy hanging around too. Nothing icky going on because Xander’s there all the time. The librarian is mentoring all the weird kids – better him than anybody else. But if Snyder had got a sniff that the librarian might not be a one hundred per cent manly man... we’re back to firing and deportation again, aren’t we? So I never said anything, not even to Willow, although I reckon she’d worked it out the same way.”

“Xander, I... I’m enormously grateful. I never realised that you, that you...”

“No. Well. Next chapter, I’ve lost count. And I’ve sorta lost track of exactly what happened when, so we may dot about a bit. Next is Larry. Remember Larry?”

Giles nodded.

“Larry – eventually – decided he was gay. Larry also decided Xander was gay. Which Xander – sorta – already knew. Or at least that although Xander was eyeing up the girls, Xander was also, on occasion, eyeing up the boys. And Xander’s upbringing – see, this is why I don’t like the father-figure thing. I have a father-figure, in the figure of my father, and if that’s father-figuring, I don't want it. Xander’s upbringing doesn’t play nice with the boy-eyeing. According to Xander’s parental influences, there were names for men who did that sort of thing.”

“Arse bandit,” said Giles quietly. “Pillow biter.”

“And others less suitable for polite company,” agreed Xander. “So you know, it’s not an option for Xander, who unsurprisingly, if chicken-heartedly, went with denial. Except, denial wouldn’t always cut it. Denial didn’t silence all the questions. Comparisons. See, Giles, when you’re small, your parents, they’re just parents.  Willow’s parents are more fun to be with than Xander’s, but you just think that it’s the way it is, not about whether it ought to be.”

Giles found he had nothing to say to that.

“And they’re your _parents_ , they’re grown-ups, they know stuff. So when they say that you’re stupid, you’re useless, you’re a waste of space, you’re a nuisance – you’re the reason _their_ lives are so fucked up – you believe it.”

He had nothing to say to that either.

“You get older, and you realise that actually they’ve fucked up their own lives without any help from anybody else, and it’s not your fault, but Giles, it’s one thing to know it and another to believe it. Really _believe_ it.”

“I’m sure it is,” he said quietly. He had stopped trying to interrupt.

“Yeah. Well. So again, a mentor – was that the word we agreed on? – who didn’t say that stuff? Definitely of the good. And after a while, you know, the sexuality thing? It’s already a given that Rupert Giles is a better rôle-model than Tony Harris. So if Rupert Giles says gay is O.K., then maybe gay _is_ O.K. Can I have some tea?”

It was so incongruous that Giles just gaped at him. He had been making tea as Xander talked, a displacement activity as it so often was, but a necessary one.

“Wouldn’t you rather have soda?”

“Fancy tea for once.”

The evening could hardly become stranger. He poured a second cup of tea and offered sugar.

“Where were we?”

“Xander’s sexuality issues.”

“Yeah. O.K. Xander is reading up on bisexuality, and by the way, Giles, if you pick up another library gig, you need to get Willow to explain to you in small words about blocking software for child-safe browsing.”

“Oh, good Lord.”

“Indeed. There’s some weird stuff out there and I read most of it. Didn’t put it into practice because hey, Tony Harris’s influence is tough to throw off, and anyway the dorky boy at school has a world of problems without needing to add _that_ one. And there’s the whole under-age thing to add on as well.

“But there’s also the fact that Xander has the world’s biggest and most embarrassing crush _ever_. On the school librarian. And if the gay thing involved denial, the God-Giles-is-hot thing took denial to previously unrecognised limits.”

Giles floundered. “Well, but Xander...”

“Shut up. I’m telling this story. The first time I thought about telling you, I was seventeen and I panicked so hard I nearly lost my lunch. I was desperate for a way to tell you and desperate for a reason not to. I would have given anything for you just to know, and I was terrified that you would find out. And eventually, I took a good look in the mirror and I realised that if it came to a choice between me and Buffy – and you needn’t worry, I don’t mean anything wrong, I mean that she’s your Slayer, you’re her Watcher – but if it came to the choice, you were going to choose her.” He raised a hand as Giles started to speak, although without much idea of what he wanted to say. “And actually, that was entirely of the good because it meant I didn’t have to do anything. I could stick with all the stuff from before about not getting you deported. But – I’m amazed you never caught me watching you. I wasn’t day-dreaming all those times when we were doing research, Giles. Or at least I was, but not the way you thought. I was looking at your hands. Or your mouth. God, Giles, your _mouth_... Do you even _know_ how often you’ve got something in your mouth? Lollipops, bananas, your pen, the end of your spectacles... Half the time I offered to go for doughnuts it was because I’d been thinking about your hands and your mouth until I couldn’t see straight, and if you had spoken to me I would have come in my pants. At least once I actually did. That was the banana in the library and I think Wesley was watching that too because he sure as hell wasn’t making any sense when he talked. Oh, and we can skip over ‘all teenagers get crushes on somebody inappropriate, it’s just what teenagers _do_ ’ because I know that. Just generally the crush goes away when the teenager gets his hands on somebody genuinely accessible. Like Cordelia. Or even Larry.”

Giles took a swallow of his tea and reached into the cabinet for the Scotch. It was a scandalous waste to add it to tea, and if his father ever found out Giles would probably be disinherited, but he needed it. He started to re-cap the bottle, and then hesitated, and poured about a teaspoonful into Xander’s cup. It wasn’t enough, he consoled himself, retreating to the couch, to count as underage drinking. Xander had probably had more in a slice of fruit cake.

“So, Giles, it seems to me that you and Ethan Rayne have both been missing something. You told me days ago that it was difficult to make a compulsion spell work against the nature of the spell-ee. But I don't think either of you got from there to the idea that a fuck-or-die spell wouldn’t work if Xander was totally straight, or even if Xander didn’t like Giles just a bit.”

Giles shook his head. “I don’t think, I don’t think it follows. Connubial spells are a class apart – the whole point of them is to make people do things they wouldn’t do otherwise. Not just that they think they wouldn’t do, or that they tell themselves they wouldn’t, but things they would actually fight against. And I wonder if the reason Ethan chose Phthorian runes was that the Phthormenes were hermaphrodite, so your orientation simply wasn’t an issue.”

Xander considered that and then shrugged. “Well, spells and stuff, your department. Or Willow’s. But the bit you’re missing: fuck-or-die spells have been a major part of my fantasy library for at least a couple of years. Which is not to say that I approve of them now: they’re way more complicated than they were in my head, and _way_ more uncomfortable and embarrassing.”

Giles smiled, without humour. “You wouldn’t be the first person to find that a fantasy made flesh leaves a certain amount to be desired.”

“Says the teenage demon-raiser. Yeah, like in the fantasy, you might pretend to be unwilling, but it doesn’t occur to you that the other person will be unwilling too.”

The silence extended until Giles could stand no more of it. “What do you want me to say, Xander? That I was willing? That I thought you were? I knew you weren’t, so I couldn’t be. That I wanted you? I did, but not like that. God, not like _that_.”

“And I’d dreamed of it – but like you say, not like that. You did – almost everything you did, I’d dreamed about you doing. I dreamed about your mouth, about your hands, and I got what I’d dreamed of, didn’t I? And all I could think was that you didn’t want to give it to me. You know what I liked best, Giles? Sitting there on the couch with you, in your arms, because I could imagine that any minute you would kiss me. Only you never did, not once, and now Ethan Rayne says you wanted to and I’m wondering why you didn’t.”

Giles wished briefly that he hadn’t set down his cup, because his hands were once again busy with handkerchief and spectacles and Xander knew how that worked.

“Because there was nothing else I could give you.”

Xander cocked his head, thought about it, and waited, plainly not understanding.

 “I knew we would have to... I told you. I knew we probably wouldn’t be able to break the spell.” He didn’t dare look at Xander, even without his spectacles. “I knew, pretty well from the start, that I could draw it all out – that I _had_ to draw it out, in _case_ we could find something – but that in the end, almost certainly, I would have to take from you every, every intimacy. Every part of your innocence. Everything, not because you wanted to give it to me, but because you had to. Because your only other choice was a painful death. I could ask you for your consent, your permission, and you might give it to me in words, and it was only a sop to my conscience.

“I was going to be the first man who touched you, the first man who got you off, the first man who blew you, the first who fucked you, and remember, I thought you were straight. I couldn’t leave you _anything_. Except that. I didn’t need to _make_ you kiss me. God, it’s pathetic, I know it is, I made you do... I wanted, Xander, I wanted to leave you something of your own, however small. I know I’ve taken everything else from you, and yes, maybe I was wrong, I was thinking about you with a girl and you say it might not be, but then at least the first time you kiss a man, do it because _you_ want to. Between us, Ethan and I, we’ve made a total disaster of your life, and that was all I could keep out of the wreckage for you. It’s not much.”

But Xander was between his legs, kneeling on the floor, taking spectacles and handkerchief from him. Leaning in, touching his mouth to Giles’, slipping his tongue over Giles’ lip as Giles snatched a surprised breath. Pushing closer, tightening a hand in Giles’ hair, wrapping a strong arm around Giles’ ribs. Pulling away again only far enough to whisper against his ear, “What did we say, Giles? It wasn’t my fault and it isn’t yours. We got through. I know to blame Ethan. I don’t blame you and you don’t get to blame yourself. You’re wrong about me not having anything else to give, but if that’s mine, you have it...” And he was giving it, kiss after kiss after blissful kiss, tea and sugar and the smallest taste of Scotch, mouthing up Giles’ jaw and over his earlobe, down to his throat, with Giles tipping his head to allow it, returning over and over to his lips until even Giles’ over-active post-Ethan conscience threw its hands in the air and wandered off muttering under its breath. Somehow Xander had scrambled onto the couch with him, wriggling and squirming into his arms, leaning against him, and kissing.

And kissing.

When eventually Xander disengaged himself and slid back to the floor, Giles’ body was humming with the nearness of him. He scrabbled for his spectacles, catching his breath once more at the sight of Xander watching him. He reached out again, greedily, but this time Xander held him off.

“Look, there’s probably a better way to ask this, one that’s less dorky and teenage, and for all I know they do it differently in England anyway, but I don’t know how and I’m just going with the only way I know, O.K.? Please, Giles, will you go out with me? I know I’m not much of a deal – no job, no qualifications, no brains, and I know Buffy and the whole slayage gig comes first and I’m cool with that, I understand it’s important. But don’t give me the ‘you’re old enough to be my whatever’ line because the whole point is that you’re not my anything, not my father, not my teacher, not my Watcher, not officially, not even my librarian. You’re just Giles. And the age thing _so_ doesn’t matter, Giles. I read your book. About the guy and the other guy and the fighting and the statues? And him not killing his sister when his father told him to and pretending he never got the letter. And then I looked it up to see if it was true – that was some of the stuff I said about the computer? – and all that about the Greeks or whoever they were and the older guy looking out for the younger one? So that’s O.K., and...”

Giles rested a finger lightly on Xander’s mouth, silencing him.

“Yes. Please. Thank you.”

Xander’s eyes widened. “That went well,” he said uncertainly. “I had at least three more reasons lined up to convince you that it wasn’t a totally stupid idea.”

“Were they better reasons than ‘you want it and I want it’?”

Xander grinned. “No.”

“I’ve spent the last week having you forcibly removed from the rank of ‘teenage boy’ and re-categorised as ‘young man’. You’re grown up, Xander. You’re old enough that I don’t have to make sensible decisions for both of us. I’m not at all sure that this _is_ a sensible decision, and do you know what? I don’t care.” There could be more kissing, but something tickled at his mind. “What book?”

“What?”

“You said you read my book. Which book?”

“Oh... it was one night when I was watching Oz. You’d done the first shift and you’d left your book behind. And Oz, you know, wolf-shape, not the chattiest of guys.”

“Oz in human shape isn’t exactly a conversationalist. Rewarding if you can make it happen, but not easy to achieve.”

“So I was bored, and even a Giles-book might be better than nothing. I read a page and then I read a chapter and then I was hooked. There was a load of stuff about some philosopher which I didn’t get, and a war, and a guy, and his lover who was another guy, and to start off I was thinking ‘Giles is reading gay porn in the library?’”

“Excuse me!”

“Well, I know, it wasn’t, but you can just bet that Snyder would have said it was. So when I left, I took it with me, and I finished it the next night, and then I put it on your bookshelf where you kept the stuff Willow wasn’t supposed to read. I think I might have cried when the older guy got killed.”

“A guy and an older guy and philosophy and a war. And a sister... You read _The Last of the Wine_?”

“Um... yeah?” Xander was beginning to look uneasy; Giles recollected several years’ worth of Xander assuring him that he neither read nor wanted to read anything more complicated than comics.

“She’s written others,” he said casually. “A couple about Alexander the Great. Theseus and the Minotaur. I’ve got them somewhere about. There’s a biography which is a bit suspect but the novels are good.” He reached for an armful of Xander again. “I read most of them when I was your age; I think I cried too when Lysis was killed.” He was lying on the couch now, Xander on top of him, hip to hip, and he could reach down and get a handful of that delectable arse.

_“You said it was over!”_

He leapt like a fish, biting his tongue in shock and peering over Xander’s shoulder at Buffy’s horrified expression.

“You said he was all spell-free and shiny!”

Xander climbed off him and Giles stood up, nervously straightening his shirt, which had mysteriously untucked itself from his waistband and unbuttoned itself to half way down his chest. Willow, behind Buffy, had her mouth in a perfect ‘O’.

“It’s O.K., Buff, this isn’t spell-breaking. It’s just normal making out on the couch with my boyfriend.”

_“What?”_

“Me. Giles. Going to attempt the couple-y goodness thing. See if it works for us.”

_“WHAT?”_

It was time to recover control, if he could. “Buffy, why don’t you sit down, and, and perhaps if you were to moderate your tone to a pitch audible other than just to dogs and dolphins, we could discuss this rationally.”

She wasn’t listening to him; her ire was aimed at Xander.

“What are you thinking? It’s Giles, he’s – he’s old!”

“And I offer you... Angel.”

“It’s creepy!”

“Let’s not go the ‘creepy’ route or I may be forced to mention Deadboy again. Giles has a reflection and a pulse.”

“He’s my Watcher!” 

“Not denying it.”

She huffed. “Well then. He can’t be your boyfriend, he’s my Watcher.”

“He’s your Watcher, Buff, he’s not your property. We all know he’s your Watcher when it suits you, and when you don’t feel like having a Watcher, you ditch him.”

“He’s my _Watcher_ , he needs to be doing Watcher-y things, not hanging round with a boy toy!”

“And you’re his Slayer, but you seem to find time for a boyfriend as well as the slayage.”

Take control _now_. “Xander, be quiet. Buffy, I will be your Watcher for as long as you want me, but Xander is right. I am not your property, and if I want a toy boy, I shall have one.” That last bit sounded a little petulant.

“Oh, is that another of those British-English-is-different things?” asked Willow, side-tracked. “Is Xan a toy boy rather than a boy toy?”

They all stared at her and she beamed back. “I think it’s a brilliant idea.”

“Will!” wailed Buffy.

“No, I do. Xander will stop Giles from being all old and stuffy, or all depressed and lost-weekending. And Giles will stop Xan from being eaten by demons. Win-win.”

“Giles, he hasn’t even got a job!”

“Neither have I,” he pointed out tartly. “And really, Buffy, it is _not_ your business.”

She wilted. “But why do you _want_ to?”

It was Xander who answered her. “Because the sex is bloody fantastic.”

“Ewwwwwwwwwwwww!”

Even Willow covered her ears at that, and Giles wondered briefly and not for the first time if it were possible to die of embarrassment.

“Well, it is, and,” with a sideways grin at Giles, “I haven’t even _seen_ Ripper yet. I bet Ripper has some really hot ideas.”

“Not listening, not listening...” chanted Buffy. Giles interrupted, sharply.

“Did you want something, Buffy, or did you just come over to provide background commentary on my love life?”

“What? Oh! Yes! I threw Ethan out. Um, I wasn’t sure what you would want, so I didn’t kill him, but I did hurt him a bit. Well, quite a lot really. Willow wanted to bring your books back and I said I’d walk her to her study group before I went on patrol.” She looked at him sideways. “Want to come?”

“If he goes, I’m coming too,” said Xander.

“Will there be...” and she shuddered, “touching?”

“Not on patrol,” said Giles, shocked. “How many times do I need to remind you of the need to focus?”

“But after patrol? In the car? Probably, yes,” advised Xander cheerfully, and Giles’ breath caught.

“In that case I’ll take Willow to her group and go by myself, thanks.” She looked at him wistfully. “Really, you and Xan? Not just the leftovers from the spell?”

“Really, Buffy,” he confirmed gently. “It’s not just you who’s grown up. It’s Xander too.” He looked round. “Willow, how are you getting home after study group? Do you need me to pick you up?”

She shook her head. “Grown up too, Giles. One of the boys has a car.” She giggled. “And he’s cute. So you can safely stay home and make out with Xan.”

“Will!” Buffy was wailing again.

“I’m coming, I’m coming. See you guys whenever.”

It was desperately quiet when they left; Xander looked concerned. “Giles? Are you... were you O.K. with that? I didn’t think that maybe you didn’t want to tell her?”

It couldn’t be the Scotch that was making him feel so high; it had to be relief. Relief and Xander. He sat down again. “I thought it went quite well. I may have permanently shifted hearing, but measured on your chosen scale of success, neither of us is dead. She would have had to know sooner or later. You may, in fact, have achieved something which has defeated me since I came to live here.”

“Yay, Xan Achievement-Man. What?”

“I think it possible that Buffy may, in future, stop and knock at the door, rather than risk interrupting us _in flagrante_.”


	10. In Which Xander Learns Giles’ Secret, and We Discover What Happens to the Boy’s Big Book of Dinosaurs

“I think it possible that Buffy may, in future, stop and knock at the door, rather than risk interrupting us _in flagrante_.”

“Yeah. About that. I’m sorta hoping there’s going to be some, and soon? I mean, not wanting to complain or anything, but I had two and a half days which involved more two person _flagrante_ -ing than I had ever had before _in total_ , and then three days with none at all, and I’m thinking that Buffy and Will aren’t likely to come back here tonight, and _flagrante_ sounds like a good thing to be in?”

“I expect I could fit you into my not terribly crowded diary,” agreed Giles. “Particularly considering that over those two and a half days you got off a _lot_ more than I did, and even allowing for the state of your rampant youthful hormones and the fact that Buffy thinks I shouldn’t have sex at all, ever, that doesn’t seem fair to me.”

“Well, I was sorta wondering if we could try some of those things again, only maybe a bit slower, and with you having fewer clothes on. And maybe a bit more by way of me being allowed to touch you too?”

“That sounds good to me,” confirmed Giles, smiling, as an enthusiastic Xander settled back onto the couch with him, apparently with the intention of getting both hands inside his shirt while distracting him with kisses.

“Only problem is, you know what I like but I have absolutely no idea at all of what you like, and I’m not exactly... well, you _know_ how much experience I have because you gave it to me.”

“You underestimate yourself. You know quite a lot about what I like.”

“I do?”

“Well, think about it. How did I know what you would like?”

Xander frowned. “I just assumed it was because you... um...”

“Had been around the block a few times? Had miles on the clock?”

“I was _going_ with, had done it before and knew the sort of things that other people liked,” returned Xander repressively, although his grin threatened to break thorough.

“Oh yes, but it’s simpler than that. You were kissing my neck earlier. Why did you think I would like it?”

Xander’s face fell. “Did you not?”

Giles caught him round the body and rolled them both to get Xander underneath him. “I did,” he confirmed, nuzzling into the base of Xander’s throat and nibbling his way up towards his ear. “But why did you think I might?”

“Well, I do.”

“So you did what you like to see if I liked it too.”

“Yeah.”

Giles tickled him, and Xander squeaked. “So?”

He could almost see the idea unfold in Xander’s mind. “So you did to me the sort of thing that you like, to see if I liked it?”

“I did indeed. And you did it back to me, and I did like it, remember?”

Xander half sat up. “But... I don’t really know what I like,” he confessed. “I mean, not with a man.”

Giles shrugged. “A lot of it isn’t different with a man to how it is with a woman.” He narrowed his eyes. “Although I think I may be too old now to snog in a broom cupboard.”

“You have no sense of adventure. I learned pretty well all I know, which granted isn’t much, in the janitor’s closet. _Did_ you ever make out in a closet?”

“I don’t remember one. There was a boot room at a rugby club once, will that do? And that was with a girl, actually, the sister of the fly half. But I snogged in a variety of places just as cramped and inconvenient, if that’s what you mean. I admit, I’d rather stay out here where we can be comfortable, but I suppose if you _really_ want to go in a broom cupboard,” he sighed theatrically, “I’ll just have to oblige you.”

“It’s going to be dreadful for you,” pointed out Xander, all wide-eyed innocence. “You’ll have to teach me everything.” His fingers spidered over Giles’ groin, before settling into a steady pressure. “How to give you a really good blow job.”

“Right,” said Giles, a little breathlessly. “We can work on that any time you feel like trying. It’ll take practice. You started well but you need practice. Lots of practice. Practice every day. Possibly several times a day. Maybe I’m not as old as I thought.”

“I’m a slow learner.”

“Perhaps you need to be shown, rather than told?”

Xander nipped his throat. “Which takes me back to where we came in. What else do you like?”

Giles twisted them both until Xander was half in his lap, legs trailing along the couch.

“I want to watch you,” he whispered in Xander’s ear. “I want to watch and see precisely what you do when you touch yourself. And then I want to see what you look like when I touch you. I want to tell you to get yourself ready for me, to tell you how to do it, and to watch while you do.” Xander’s eyes went wide and Giles chuckled. “What form do you think Watcher porn usually takes? It nearly killed me, knowing you were sitting here behind me, getting yourself off, and I couldn’t see.”

“There’s Watcher _porn_?”

“You think you’re the first person ever to disappear into the stacks with the book about the ‘sky-clad rituals’? All the trainee Watchers knew that there were one or two of the Watcher diaries which were more interesting than the others.” He caught the flash of discomfort. “I have not written up the last few days in my official diary, nor do I intend to. I might manage a couple of pages on Phthorian runes, with the implication that it was a research project. I don’t feel the need to be more specific; we can manage without Council members muttering that Giles was always unreliable and they’d said all along that they should have sent Hopkins, or baby Watchers muttering that Ripper has all the luck.”

“Yeah. Ripper. About him.”

“What about Ripper? Mentioning him in front of Buffy was unkind; you know how she feels about that. Ripper having sex is even worse in her eyes than Giles having sex.”

Xander’s breath came a little short but his eyes were bright. “Is it?”

Giles kissed him. “You don’t have to bother about Ripper.”

“Who’s bothered? I wasn’t joking when I said that I reckoned Ripper would have some good ideas.”

“I... what?”

“I think he might be fun.”

“Fu... you think he might be _fun_?”

“Maybe fun’s the wrong word. I think Ripper sounds exciting. I’ve seen Giles, but I haven’t seen Ripper lately. Well, except when you hit Ethan. And I was _totally_ in favour of that.”

“Are you telling me... are you telling me that I spent all that time trying to convince you that I wouldn’t hurt you, trying to reassure you that you were safe with me, and all the time you wanted _Ripper_?”

“That would be a no. Definitely for the first time, I wanted Giles. If you’d shown me Ripper I would have screamed and run. But now? I wanna see Ripper again. What does Ripper like? Does he like to watch too?”

“Not so much.” That came as a growl. “Ripper doesn’t care if other people watch him, though. You _have_ seen Ripper; you just weren’t paying attention. Back seat blow job in a factory car park, where _anybody_ might have been watching? That’s Ripper. Ripper would take you to a club and make sure that everybody knew you were with me. Collar you, maybe? Make you show what I’d taught you about how to please me? Ripper would get you off somewhere in public where you had to be very, very quiet if you weren’t to draw attention to yourself. Ripper might tie you, and tease you until you begged. Or...” he remembered himself, and backed off a little; Xander looked slightly stunned. “Giles might remind Xander to be careful what he asked for, in case he got it, and Giles might remind Ripper that _that_ was the sort of behaviour that got him needing heavy duty antibiotics before he was twenty, and that Xander would need a safe word.”

“Need a huh?”

“Safe word? Dead man’s handle? Panic button? You choose a word, or a phrase, that you would never say during sex, and then I can push a bit, and you can plead and beg, or fight and swear, or however it takes you, but if it’s honestly too much, you say your safe word and I back off.”

Xander considered this. “So I say ‘no, no, stop’ and Ripper just goes ‘mwahahahahaha’ and keeps on, but I say... um... ‘Snyder’ and all bets are off?”

Giles shuddered. “If you mention Principal Snyder in bed, I suspect I’ll be rendered actually incapable, probably for a month. Yes.”

“Cool.” 

“You don’t think that perhaps we should spend some more time on the basics before you launch off towards the farther shores of kink?”

“No. I had three years – three _years_ – on and off of fantasizing about getting it on with you. I’m not against the other stuff, in fact I’m all for it, but now I wanna get dirty in the library with the librarian. Only we blew up the library. Damn.”

“Ah. Will you be terribly disappointed if I confess that I’m not actually a librarian?”

“ _What?_ Of course you’re a librarian. It was on your name plate: R Giles, Librarian. And you had a certificate over your desk, listing librarianly characteristics and saying that you belonged to the, the Queen’s Own Guild of Librarians, or something.”

“Watchers’ Council forgery. They needed me to be in the school, the vacancy was for a librarian, so I became a librarian. It’s probably just as well I’m not a real one: I don’t know what happens to a Chartered Librarian who allows a slayer and her friends to blow up his library. They would probably cut up all my reference cards and drum me out of the Association.”

“But... how am I going to fulfil my library fantasy if you’re not a librarian?”

“Would a museum do? Professor Giles has reciprocal access rights at the museum.”

“ _Professor_ Giles? Is he real?”

“Oh yes, quite real. Professor of Classics, Stella Maris College, University of Oxford. I’m on indefinite sabbatical while I work for... well, I went to the museum in London, and then there’s the Council and I’m supposed to be writing a book. In my copious free time, I _am_ writing a book. I’ve done at least two chapters since I came to America.”

“Oooh,” said Xander, his eyes glazing. “Professor Giles. Oh God. Professor. If I’d known that, I’d have jumped you in the library years ago. Professor Giles.”

“Yes, Mr Harris?”

“You’ve never called me that before.”

“My students are not children, Mr Harris. They are old enough to be addressed with a modicum of respect. When they deserve it.”

Xander shivered. “How come when you say ‘Mr Harris’ it doesn’t sound at all respectful? It sounds all... threatening.”

“How come that when you say ‘Professor Giles’, your voice trembles? Is it an authority thing, Mr Harris?”

Xander made a sound half-way between a laugh and a whimper.

“Is _that_ why you fell so easily for Miss French, Mr Harris? Not merely that she was attractive but that she was a teacher?”

Xander screwed up his face; Giles chuckled. “Could I have got you to pay attention all this time merely by announcing myself as Professor Giles?”

“Hell, yeah. God, Professor Giles is way better than a librarian.”

“That’s ‘hell, yeah, _sir’_. What are you expecting Professor Giles to do, Mr Harris?”

Xander got up and wandered across the room to Giles’ desk; he stopped and looked down at the things abandoned on it.

“Professor Giles... Professor Giles threatened that if I damaged his books _one_ _more_ _time_ , he’d turn me over his knee. But I don’t know if he meant it.”

Behind Xander’s back, Professor Giles’ eyebrows shot up and his grin turned decidedly Ripperish. “I never joke about my books, Mr Harris.”

Xander glanced back over his shoulder, and then deliberately put out a single finger and very, very gently, tipped over the abandoned tea cup. Giles rose from the couch, looked down at the desk, and pulled the chair to the middle of the room, settling himself on it.

“I warned you, Mr Harris. Come here.”

Behind Xander, a dribble of cold sweet tea soaked into the binding of _The Boy’s Big Book of Dinosaurs_.

 


End file.
